Wrists of men, women move differently: Study

Our left and right wrists mirror each other, but there are differences between the wrists of men and women, according to new research. “If someone has dysfunction of the wrist, it really impacts their quality of life,” says first author Brent Foster, a graduate student in Abhijit Chaudhari’s lab in the radiology department at the University of California, Davis.

Foster and his team scanned both wrists of 18 individuals—nine men and nine women of varying ages—with no history of wrist injuries, disease, or pain. Using innovative MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) techniques, which allow 3D views of wrists in motion, the researchers had individuals move their wrists in five ways while scanning them to track the movement of the wrist bones and joint. Then the researchers used advanced mathematical techniques to analyze the images to generate robust models of wrist motion.

“While each wrist bone had been studied individually before, our work really focuses on how wrist bones move and act together,” Foster says. The researchers initially hypothesized that there would not be significant wrist differences found between the male and female volunteers. But their measurements changed their minds: “While there is literature about scaling differences between male and female wrists, we are able to examine if bone trajectories during wrist motion differ by gender,” says Foster.