Women's hands 'harbour more bugs'

by Amitjha | November 3, 2008 at 09:49 pm

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This is really very intresting finding which again reinforces the gender divide, this time saying that womens hand carry more bacteria then the man's hand.What should be the real intent behind publishing this kind research, if we follow the world washimg soap consumption trend , it clearly indicates that women are major user of it, so this kind of finding will help the marketers to target women more specifically.

Women have a greater range of different types of bacteria on the palms of their hands than men, US research suggests.

The study also found that human hands harbour far higher numbers of bacteria species than previously thought.

Using powerful gene sequencing techniques, researchers found a typical hand had roughly 150 different species of bacteria living on it.

The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences study found bacteria types varied greatly between individuals.

The researchers, from the University of Colorado at Boulder, hope their work will help scientists to establish a "healthy baseline" of bacteria species on the human hand.

This could potentially help them to identify which species are linked to specific diseases.

Lead researcher Dr Noah Fierer said: "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."

The study detected and identified more than 4,700 different bacteria species across 102 human hands in the study.

However, only five species were shared among all 51 participants.

Even the right and left palms of the same individual shared an average of only 17% of the same bacteria types.