Ramzi's Method?

There’s a 2007 study out there claiming that fetal gender can be determined reliably at 6 weeks via transvaginal ultrasound, using the position of the placenta/chorionic villi as an indicator.

http://hcp.obgyn.net/hpv/content/article/1760982/1878451

This doesn’t seem legit to me! Does anyone know anything about whether this is a good, peer-reviewed journal? Thoughts?!

[name]Blade[/name]?

This is a hybrid piece (half opinion, half research) published on a website, not an indexed scientific journal. On the one hand, it’s a poor paper-- for starters, not a single test of statistical significance was calculated; there’s a great deal of opinion and unnecessary information than any decent editor would have slashed.

On the other hand, though, it was fairly intensive work. He studied nearly 6000 births, which should be more than an adequate sample size, and had dramatically polarized results (97.5% prediction accuracy based on the polarity of the placenta/CV alone)-- even though, again, he never bothered to actually calculate any statistics.

It was interesting and quasi-valid enough for me to run a few searches through the big biomedical publication database pubmed to see what else might have been published on this topic. Unfortunately, nothing described as [name]Ramzi[/name] or [name]Ramzi[/name]'s method was indexed. I scoped out a few big review articles on early fetal sex determination but they all involved molecular genetic analysis of maternal blood samples, nothing via ultrasound.

It seems so interesting that more should be published-- it’s an interesting hypothesis that should at least be formally assessed.

Hm, they told me my placenta was right in front. I wonder how that would factor into this, which seems to be looking at right vs. left.

Yeah, the guy’s theory-- not backed up by any evidence-- is that eggs released by the right ovary have a membrane polarity that attracts Y sperm and repels X; vice versa for the left.

It is true that right ovary embryos tend to implant on the right side of the uterus (which they bang into) and left ovary embryos, left. But that membrane polarity reversal business and the ‘charge’ of different sperm… never heard of it, and there was no evidence cited.

Y sperm are much lighter than X sperm, since the Y chromosome is smaller. That’s how cell-sorting works and why fertility clinics which offer gender selection can do so.

Yea, I’ve heard that it has more to do with timing, like Y-carrying sperm are lighter and faster, but X-carrying sperm survive longer.