Sex Chromosome Anomalies, Hormones, and Aggressivity

Hormonal and neuropsychological evaluation of two 47,XYY patients with pituitary abnormalities

“…A volumetric MRI study demonstrated various brain abnormalities in these individuals [Warwick et al, 1999], but there are no data on pituitary morphology in polysomy and the few data available on pituitary function are conflicting [Schiavi et al, 1978[Schiavi et al, , 1984Ishida et al, 1979;BeneZech and Noel, 1985]. We report on two 47,XYY boys with abnormalities of the pituitary gland detected by MRI and normal hypothalamic-pituitary axis function.…”

“…The gonadal function of 47,XYY males is usually normal [BeneZech and Noel, 1985;Linden et al, 1996]; however a great variability in plasma testosterone and gonadotropins levels has been reported [Ishida et al, 1979;Rivera et al, 1979;Schiavi et al, 1984;BeneZech and Noel, 1985]. Other features such as hypospadias, small and undescended testicles [Buyse, 1990], renal abnormalities, epilepsy and/or abnormal electroencephalograms [Forsmann, 1967] and brain abnormalities at the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), in particular abnormalities of the ventricles [Warwick et al, 1999] corpus callosum and cerebellum [Brun and Gustavson, 1972;Hakola and Iivanainen, 1978], have also been described.…”

47, XYY Karyotype and Borderline Personality Disorder: An Italian Judicial Case and a Review of the Literature

“…Other authors described a relation with impairment in impulse control [34] low frustration tolerance, fits of anger from childhood, aggressiveness, tendency to antisocial behavior and even Borderline or Antisocial Personality Disorders [19,[35][36][37]. In fact, since its discovery, the XYY trisomy has been connected with criminal and/or deviant behavior.…”

Prenatal Testosterone Levels in XXY and XYY Males

“…In XYY adult males, a wide range of testosterone levels has been described, in some cases significantly higher than controls [1] some normal [19][20][21], while others report levels lower than normal [22,23], Salivary testos terone studies on 5 pre-pubertal and 5 pubertal XYY boys identified by population screening have shown them to be within the normal range [9], During fetal life, plasma testosterone levels differ be tween males and females, with males having high levels between 11 and 17 weeks gestation which then decline until they approximate to those in females by the time of birth [24].…”

“…It has been postulated that behavioural differences between normal males and those with an additional X or Y chromosome may be related to hormonal variations in the prenatal or postnatal period [1,2], but evidence to support the hypothesis is limited.…”