How many cells are there in the human body?

How many cells are there in the human body? This question is difficult to answer. We can accurately count the number of bones (206 in an adult), teeth (32) or chromosomes (46). We can also approximate the number of liters of blood, which ranges from 4.5 to 6. number of cells It is much more difficult to measure because varies greatly more than blood.

Therefore until now No very precise figures are given.. Some estimates have been made, but very superficial. However, a group of scientists from McGill Universityspent in Canada revision research that allowed him to make much more accurate measurements of the number of cells in the human body.

They took into account data for men, women and children, comparing the sizes of different cells and the tissues that contain them. This allows for a much more accurate calculation, since the larger the cell size, the smaller its number will be in the same tissue, and vice versa. Using this mechanism, they concluded that for man 70 kg, woman 60 kg and child 32 kg., number of cells 36, 28 and 16 billion. That is, each of these numbers is followed by 12 zeros. This is, of course, quite a large amount, although some features have to be taken into account.

How did they measure the number of cells in the human body?

This study is a bibliographic review. That is, its authors did not conduct any new research, but instead analyzed existing data on the topic in scientific literature.

In total, they took into account information from 1500 documentswhich included information about 400 cell typesV 60 different fabrics. Tissues are groups of these cells that can come in a wide variety of sizes. As reported in Living Sciencecomparing the proportions between the smallest and largest cells that have been analyzed with those between animals may provide an example relationship between a shrew and a blue whale.

Thus, they saw that the inverse relationship between the number of cells in tissues and their size is very natural. That is, as we have already seen, the larger they were, the fewer there were. And this persisted in the same proportion for most cell types. This made it possible to collectively calculate how many cells are contained in a tissue, knowing only overall tissue size and individual cell size.

Details we need to take into account

gender bias They are everywhere, including in scientific research. In fact, this is why, until recently, many medications caused more serious side effects in women. clinical trials, which analyzed effects and calculated doses, were mainly carried out on men. Therefore, when these drugs were administered to women, the effectiveness was very different.

Something similar happens with cell count studies. Most of those taken into account size of cells and tissues This was implemented in men. Thus, these researchers were able to make much more specific calculations for adult men than for women and children.

This is the first limitation of the study. But that is not all. There is also the fact that adipocytes and myocytes, which are fat and muscle cells respectively, vary greatly depending on a person’s body type. It’s true that we’re talking on the order of billions; but even then there can be big differences.

Despite this, this is the most approximate cell number data that has ever been obtained. Now, to be more specific, these scientists want to go deeper into how quantity lymphocytessince they are important cells of the immune system, they can also vary greatly, seriously affecting health, whether they fall or rise too high.

This will be the next step. Now at least we know, with greater accuracy and some gender bias, how many cells the human body has. This may not be accurate for a trivial question, but it is interesting information.