Talk:Klinefelter's syndrome

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Information from Klinefelter's syndrome appeared on Portal:Medicine in the Did you know section on June 26, 2006.

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Some is this article is taken from a 1993 public domain source, "Understanding Klinefelter Syndrome, A Guide for XXY Males and Their Families" by Robert Bock of the Office of Research Reporting, NICHD, NIH Pub. No. 93-3202 at http://www.nichd.nih.gov/publications/pubs/klinefelter.htm

It should be merged into the existing article text.

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Contents 1 Strip this article 2 Abnormality 3 Stop whitewashing 4 Mortalitiy 5 Conflicting facts 6 XXY

[edit] Strip this article

Direct quotations in the manner of interviews and such a meandering, magazine-article approach are not appropriate for an encyclopedia. There's a lot of POV here and useless information. Unless strong objections are voiced, I'm going to cut a wide swath of deletion throughout and pare it down to a facts-only format as we have for other medical disorders. Jeeves 09:07, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)

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The material below appears to have been data-dumped in. The fact that something is public domain doesn't mean we should automatically put it into an article. The style, and the sheer amount of information, was not encyclopedic. However, there was plenty of good material, so here it is for reference. Someone with some time can go through and incorporate appropriate bits into the article. Isomorphic 02:34, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The material below is taken from a 1993 public domain source, "Understanding Klinefelter Syndrome, A Guide for XXY Males and Their Families" by Robert Bock of the Office of Research Reporting, NICHD, NIH Pub. No. 93-3202 at http://www.nichd.nih.gov/publications/pubs/klinefelter.htm and should be merged into the article text above

I cut the article, since it was bloating this talk page and it had been here for a year. See the link above or an old talk page if you want to look at it.--Prosfilaes 05:34, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Abnormality

It's not a common variation; it's less than 0.1%. And the negative connotations of "abnormal" are appropriate; there are not positive features listed in the article. Let's not whitewash this.--Prosfilaes 14:47, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

It has nothing to do with "whitewashing" to remove an expression that is judgemental; just because there is nothing postive listed is not a reason to call something "abnormal". And 0.1% is still 1000 people out of one million -- people who usually object to be called "abnormal", and who therefore object to have the condition called "abnormal", too. -- AlexR 04:05, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

Let's stay away from personal attacks like "POV-pusher", even in the edit comments. 1 out of 1000 is pretty rare, and variations usually refer to something fairly common. I don't see why we should avoid using the word abnormal to describe this, even if it can have mild negative connotations, especially as Klinefelter's syndrome is not a positive thing. --Prosfilaes 20:17, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

AlexR, please assume good faith. A variation that occurs in one out of a thousand cases can be accurately described as "abnormal". Prosfilaes doesn't need to have some POV in order to think that the word is appropriate. That said, given that the statistics are shown in the same sentence, it is not obvious to me how the article gains by using the word "abnormal", and at least one person feels strongly that it detracts from the article by being off-putting. Unfortunately "one of the most common genetic variations" has the potential to mislead someone quickly scanning the paragraph. What if the sentence were to read:

Human males usually have an XY karyotype. The XXY chromosome arrangement is one of the most common genetic variations from the XY karotype, the norm in human males. It occurs in about 1 in 1,000 male births...

I'm not invested in that wording, but I suggest that some alternate phrasing might accomodate both the desire to stress the condition's statistical rarity, and the desire to avoid even the slightest hint of judgemental language. The fact that the condition is an undesirable one is perhaps an important point that could be mentioned in the first paragraph: "It is named after Dr. Harry Klinefelter, the medical researcher who first described this syndrome in 1942, and is associated with additional risk for some medical conditions." Jkelly 00:27, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Stop whitewashing

I'm really really tired with the whitewashing of this article. Descriptions of all the disorders use the word "rare" or "slightly"; but the discussions of rare X-linked disorders never mention how rare they are in normal males.--Prosfilaes 03:18, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

>>Since males at the end of the XXY spectrum are at no greater risk for the conditions mentioned than women, it sounds unrealistic to have 'increased risk' in the opening paragraph.

The linked article says that they will most probably be infertile and most have some degree of language impairment. They're also at risk for male problems (including a high risk for gynecomastia) that women just don't have to worry about.--Prosfilaes 02:24, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

>>Gynecomastia is not a health problem, it's simply increased male breast tissue. The ratio of infertility in XXY is unknown, however it is certain that many XXY males are not infertile.

Gynecomastia is listed in the category "health conditions related to obesity", has negative social and psychological effects, and is frequently cured by drugs, surgery, or radiation. The source above says that XXY males are infertile; we need a contrary source to change that. Wikipedia demands that things have verifiable sources. --Prosfilaes 01:58, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Mortalitiy

The JCEM this weeks has a longitudinal study on mortality: http://jcem.endojournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/90/12/6516?etoc. Do we include this? JFW | T@lk 14:51, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

It's interesting the increased mortality in those studied resulted from 'most major causes of death'. Some studies have shown a connection between overall health decay and frequent high levels of emotional stress (http://stress.about.com/od/stresshealth/). Diagnosed XXY males have been noted for greater vulnerability to stress from adverse environments.

Interesting hypothesis. Has it been studied prospectively? JFW | T@lk 03:47, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Conflicting facts

These sentences from the variations section factually:

The 48, XXYY (male) syndrome occurs 1 in 17,000 births and is also considered to be a variation of Klinefelter's syndrome. XXYY is no longer considered a variation of KS, although it has not yet been assigned an ICD-9 code.

I have changed the first of the two sentences to coincide with the second sentence, but I am not familiar with this topic and am uncertain of which statement is correct. --Matthew 00:21, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] XXY

XXY redirects here. It would be great if there could be article on the more general phenomena rather than exclusively focusing on the human application. I was looking for this non-existant article after reading abouy all male calico cats being XXY. If there is a more general article under another name I can't find, please make a proper disambiguation. But somehow I suspect it more of the overwhelming human bias of WP!--71.81.70.212 04:16, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

It's not that common a condition, and the concept only applies to species who have mammalian sex determination. Cats are known about, but the overwhelming knowledge is human, it's not the bias of wikipedia per se as much as the bias in the literature. - cohesion 06:53, 22 November 2006 (UTC)