thats cuz they never studied my hands!

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Study: Women lead men in bacteria, hands down

By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID Associated Press Writer

Nov 3rd, 2008 | WASHINGTON -- Wash your hands, folks, especially you

ladies. A new study found that women have a greater variety of

bacteria on their hands than men do. And everybody has more types of

bacteria than the researchers expected to find.

 

" One thing that really is astonishing is the variability between

individuals, and also between hands on the same individual, " said

University of Colorado biochemistry assistant professor Rob Knight, a

co-author of the paper.

 

" The sheer number of bacteria species detected on the hands of the

study participants was a big surprise, and so was the greater

diversity of bacteria we found on the hands of women, " added lead

researcher Noah Fierer, an assistant professor in Colorado's

department of ecology and evolutionary biology.

 

The researchers aren't sure why women harbored a greater variety of

bacteria than men, but Fierer suggested it may have to so with the

acidity of the skin. Knight said men generally have more acidic skin

than women.

 

Other possibilities are differences in sweat and oil gland production

between men and women, the frequency of moisturizer or cosmetics

applications, skin thickness or hormone production, he said.

 

Women also may have more bacteria living under the surface of the skin

where they are not accessible to washing, Knight added.

 

Asked if guys should worry about holding hands with girls, Knight

said: " I guess it depends on which girl. "

 

He stressed that " the vast majority of the bacteria we have on our

body are either harmless or beneficial ... the pathogens are a small

minority. "

 

The researchers took samples from the palms of 51 college students --

that's 102 hands -- and tested the samples using a new, highly

detailed system for detecting bacteria DNA.

 

They identified 4,742 species of bacteria overall, only 5 of which

were on every hand, they report on Monday's online edition of

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

 

The average hand harbored 150 species of bacteria.

 

Not only did individuals have few types of bacteria in common, the

left and right hands of the same individual shared only about 17

percent of the same bacteria types, the researchers found.

 

The differences between dominant and non-dominant hands were probably

due to environmental conditions like oil production, salinity,

moisture or variable environmental surfaces touched by either hand of

an individual, Fierer said.

 

Knight said the researchers hope to repeat the experiment in other

countries where different hands are assigned specific tasks.

 

While the researchers stressed the importance of regular hand washing,

they also noted that washing did not eliminate bacteria.

 

" Either the bacterial colonies rapidly re-establish after hand

washing, or washing (as practiced by the students included in this

study) does not remove the majority of bacteria taxa found on the skin

surface, " the researchers said in their report.

 

While the tests could determine how many different types of bacteria

were present, they could not count the total amount of bacteria on

each hand.

 

The research was funded primarily by the National Institutes of Health

and the National Science Foundation.

 

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On the Net:

 

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: http://www.pnas.org

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For in a Republic, who is “the country� Is it the Government which is for

the moment in the saddle? Why, the Government is merely a servant—merely a

temporary servant; it cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and

what is wrong, and decide who is a patriot and who isn’t. Its function is to

obey orders, not originate them.

Mark Twain