Patterns of variability in the shapes of feet and hands in girls aged 17–20 years in Saratov region

Background. The youthful age period is of the greatest interest for research, since it is he who is a turning point in the individual development of a person. The purpose of the study is to identify the patterns of variability in the shapes of the feet and hands of girls 17- 20 years old in Saratov region. Materials and methods. The object of the study was 229 girls 18-19 years old students of Saratov State Medical University named after V.I. Razumovsky, who are the indigenous inhabitants of Saratov region. The foot print determined its type: Egyptian, Roman or Greek. The brush imprint was used to determine its morphological types: ulnar, radial or indeterminate. Results. The most common form of the hand in girls is radial (49.8 %). More than half of the girls have the same shape of the right and left hands – radial. The most common option for different forms of the right and left hands was a combination of radial and ulnar forms (20.1 %). In this case, the option when the right hand has a radial, and the left – ulnar form, occurs 6.7 times more often than the reverse combination. The predominant shape of the foot is Roman, when the thumb is approximately equal to the second (47.1 %). More than two-thirds of girls have the same shape of the right and left feet – more often these are Roman or Egyptian feet. The most common option was a combination of Egyptian and Roman feet (14 %). There were no differences in the prevalence of any of these forms on one side with this combination. Conclusions. The combined variability of the shapes of the brushes and feet showed that the predominant options are: a combination of radial brushes with Egyptian feet, as well as a combination of radial and ulnar brushes with Roman feet. It has been noted that girls with ulnar brushes, as well as girls whose brushes were radial and ulnar (regardless of the side of observation) in 100 % of cases had Roman feet.