By Laura Sinpetru
The scientific community has long been aware of the fact that the spinal columns of men and women are not exactly alike in that the vertebrae that make up the male spine have a somewhat bigger cross-section than the ones that comprise the female spine.
In a new study in the Journal of Pediatrics, a team of scientists at the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles show that this difference is not something that develops in time but is instead present at birth. 
The researchers, led by specialist Vicente Gilsanz, say that, having used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to look at the spine of newborn boys and girls, they found the vertebral cross-section to be an average 10.6% smaller in the latter.