CLITORAL AND PENILE SIZES OF FULL-TERM NEWBORNS IN 2 DIFFERENT ETHNIC-GROUPS

Standards of penile and clitoral sizes are useful for diagnosis of gen ital abnormalities, In order to verify whether ethnicity has an effect on the size of external genitalia in newborns, 570 full term infants, Jews (221) and Bedouins (349), at the neonatal department of the Soro ka Medical Center were examined, Clitoral length, the distance between the center of the anus to the fourchette (AF) and the distance betwee n the center of the anus and the base of the clitoris (AC) were measur ed, and the AF/AC ratio was calculated for the females, Penile length was measured in the males, Significant differences in clitoral length (12.6%) between the Jewish group (5.87+/-1.48 mm) and the Bedouin grou p (6.61+/-1.72 mm) (p<0.01) and in the ratio of AF to AC between the t wo ethnic groups (p<0.01) were found, To the best of our knowledge, ou r study is the first to report ethnic differences in genital sizes of newborns.