foshydog / Flickr
About one in 12 men is colorblind. By comparison, one in 200 women is colorblind. After all, why does this disease affect men more than women?
I estimate that 300 million people around the world are Daltonics. This means that they cannot distinguish certain shades of color, they have difficulty distinguishing the brightness of color or, more rarely, they cannot see any color.
However, color blindness does not affect men and women equally. According to Cleveland Clinic, the disease affects about one in 12 men, compared to one in 200 women.
As it writes, it is the fault of genetics that governs the function of the human eye. People see the colors using cells specialized on the back of the eyeball, called cones.
There are three types of cone cells that see the color: red, green and blue. And each is tuned to be more sensitive to certain wavelengths, explained, to the same magazine, Fly ABGoclinical spokesman at the American Academy of Ophthalmology.
“When one or more of these color cone cells are absent or not working correctlyDaltonism happens, ”he explained.
The most common form of color blindness is red-red color blindness.
This happens when people are born without the type of cones that are tuned to red and/or green light, or when these cones are missing or are inadvertently attuned to the wrong wave length of light.
If a person has problems with blue-sensitive cones in their eyes, it will be colorblind to yellow-blue.
And if all types of cones are missing or if they are substantially affected, a full color blindness. But this form of color blindness is extremely rare. It affects less than 1 in 30,000 individuals.
But, after all, why is there more color dolath than colorblinds?
Color blindness affects men more than women because it is usually caused by a recessive genetic characteristics linked to chromosome X.
Normally, recessive characteristics only manifest themselves if the person inherits two dysfunctional copies of a gene, ie a copy of each parent.
Thus, a person with a functional copy of a conical cell gene will usually have a normal chromatic view.
The genes responsible for light -sensitive proteins that constitute cells Cone are located only on chromosome Xwhich means that men have a single copy of each gene – and only a hypothesis of each functioning correctly.
Thus, if this only copy has a mutation, it is likely to be colorblind.
Women, on the other hand, usually have two X chromosomes in each cell – one of each parent. That is, even if an X chromosome has a defective version of a genic cell gene, the other often has a functional copy that can compensate.
As a result, the women are much less likely to develop color daltonism, although they can transport and transmit the defective genes that are based on the disease.
“Women may suffer from color blindness, but it is quite rare and is usually caused by something different from genetics. For example, diseases such as optic nerve inflammation, cataracts and glaucoma can cause daltonism later in life,” Usiwoma Abugo told Live Science.
