Bernard J. Crespi

Hormones mediate life-history trade-offs. In female mammals, such trade-offs have been studied predominantly in the contexts of oestrogen, progesterone and prolactin. We evaluate the hypothesis that prenatal and postnatal testosterone level…

Anogenital distance is a well-validated marker of prenatal testosterone, with shorter distances indicating lower levels during early gestation. A suite of studies has tested for links of anogenital distance with risk of endometriosis, but t…

Abstract Background Anogenital distance is a well-validated marker of prenatal testosterone, with shorter distances indicating lower levels during early gestation. A suite of studies has linked anogenital distance with risk of endometriosis…

Two recent genomic studies have demonstrated that lower genetically-predicted testosterone is associated with higher risk of endometriosis. These results are concordant with a suite of additional findings, including: (1) links of endometrio…

Objective: Investigate how women with self-reported endometriosis, polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), or no known reproductive disease perform on the Reading the Mind in the Eyes task, a metric of social cognitive empathic abilities, and how…

Endometriosis is a polygenic, estrogen-dependent, inflammatory disorder of uncertain aetiology associated with pain, infertility and reduced quality of life. While the positive association between endometriosis and estrogen is established, …

Evolutionary and comparative approaches can yield novel insights into human adaptation and disease. Endometriosis and polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) each affect up to 10% of women and significantly reduce the health, fertility, and qualit…

Abstract We provide the first analysis and synthesis of the evolutionary and mechanistic bases for risk of endometriosis in humans, structured around Niko Tinbergen's four questions about phenotypes: phylogenetic history, development, mecha…

Evidence linking endometriosis to low prenatal testosterone, and evidence that risk of polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is associated with high prenatal testosterone, have motivated the hypothesis that endometriosis and PCOS exhibit inverse…

Hippocrates attributed women's high emotionality - hysteria - to a 'wandering womb'. Although hysteria diagnoses were abandoned along with the notion that displaced wombs cause emotional disturbance, recent research suggests that elevated l…