Graduation Year

2021

Document Type

Thesis

Degree

M.A.

Degree Name

Master of Arts (M.A.)

Degree Granting Department

Anthropology

Major Professor

Lorena Madrigal, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Jonathan Bethard, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Elizabeth Miller, Ph.D.

Keywords

applied anthropology, differential fertility, folate supplementation, natural selection

Abstract

Effects of the MTHFR C677T allele on reproduction include multiple complications. The frequency of births with neural tube defects, Down Syndrome, or recurrent pregnancy loss of CC, CT, and TT mothers was measured using data collected from existing literature. Total participants n=2605 (n=1111 cases, n=1494 controls). Results show that folic acid supplementation did not prevent the incidence of NTD pregnancy in CT women. Furthermore, CT women are more fecund overall, producing more pregnancies than CC and TT women. While CT case women did have higher incidences of RPL, NTD pregnancy and DS pregnancy, this is due to the overall greater number of pregnancies. This higher fecundity may be the natural selective mechanism explaining the high frequency of this otherwise negative polymorphism.

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