[Sex differences in morphologic aging processes]

According to Max Bürger (2) it is justified to speak of sexual divergence of biomorphosis. Morphometrical investigations have proved the existence of such sexual differences. The following results were obtained: The first example concerns the increase of fatty tissue in parathyroid glands which we measured on histological slides of 135 human samples by means of the point counting method. The fatty tissue of males was shown to increase continuously with statistic significance, whereas this process stops in females during their generative phase between the 2nd and 5th decade. Evidence for the sexual divergence was also obtained by investigating the fatty tissue between the bundles of muscle fibers of the tongue, however, without being able to statistically verify these results. We found the same sexual differences by measuring the muscle cell regression and connective tissue proliferation in the ciliary muscle of human eyes and tunica muscularis of the small intestine as well. All findings prove that the female is able to stay biologically younger during her generative activity compared to males. After menopause the aging processes speed up in female tissues without making up for the "age lead" of males. It is also worth mentioning that macroscopic anthropometric features do confirm the same fact, e.g., length and breadth of human auricles, ranging in age from 18 to 51 years.