Common HLA alleles associated with health, but not with facial attractiveness

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Date
2007
Authors
Coetzee, Vinet
Barrett, Louise
Greeff, Jaco M.
Henzi, Peter
Perrett, David I.
Wadee, Ahmed A.
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Public Library of Science
Abstract
Three adaptive hypotheses have been proposed to explain the link between the human leucocyte antigen (HLA) genes, health measures and facial attractiveness: inbreeding avoidance, heterozygote advantage and frequency-dependent selection. This paper reports findings that support a new hypothesis relating HLA to health. We suggest a new method to quantify the level of heterozygosity. HLA heterozygosity did not significantly predict health measures in women, but allele frequency did. Women with more common HLA alleles reported fewer cold and flu bouts per year, fewer illnesses in the previous year and rated themselves healthier than women with rare alleles. To our knowledge, this is the first study to show a positive correlation between HLA allele frequency and general health measures. We propose that certain common HLA alleles confer resistance to prevalent pathogens. Nevertheless, neither HLA heterozygosity nor allele frequency significantly predicted how healthy or attractive men rated the female volunteers. Three non-mutually exclusive explanations are put forward to explain this finding.
Description
Sherpa Romeo green journal: open access
Keywords
Human leucocyte antigen , HLA genes , HLA allele , Heterozygosity , Health measures , Facial attractiveness
Citation
Coetzee, V., Barrett, L., Greeff, J. M., Henzi, S. P., Perrett, D. I., & Wadee, A. A. (2007). Common HLA alleles associated with health, but not with facial attractiveness. PLoS ONE, 2(7), e640. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0000640