研究：耳朵会随着年龄增长而变大

前英国国会议员现评论家马修•帕里斯在最近的一篇专栏中提到，随着年龄的增长，他本来就大的耳朵变得更大了，他觉得有些尴尬，正在寻找使耳朵缩小的方法。

帕里斯可能不知道，他写这篇文章之时正是有关耳朵大小的最早一项科学研究的二十周年的日子。1993年7 月，伦敦布罗姆利区的一名非专科医生詹姆斯•希思科特和他的同事们开始观察耳朵大小。他们从自己的病人里随机挑选了206名30岁以上的病人，测量他们的耳朵，计算发现耳朵每年平均增长0.22毫米，50年就能长1厘米。后来，1996年日本发表的研究数据和1999年意大利的一项研究证实这一发现。

研究中已列出的耳朵随年龄增长而变大原因有以下几种：由于皮肤失去弹性以及重力的影响，耳朵（鼻子也是）会随着年龄的增加而下垂；耳垂下垂，如果戴着重重的耳环，这一现象可能加重；更有争议的一个原因是，有人提出，软骨不像骨头，会继续增长，而耳朵是由软骨构成的，这可能也算作耳朵不断增大的原因之一。

MP-turned-pundit Matthew Parris is fretting about a very big subject – his ears. In his column in the Times this week, he said that as he has got older his ears have got larger. "They started quite big and now it's becoming embarrassing," he complained. "Are there any pills you can take to shrink them? Never mind penis enlargement. I'm looking for ear reduction."

Parris may not realise it, but he was writing on the 20th anniversary of one of the first scientific studies of ear size. Anecdotally, it had always been felt that old blokes tended to have bigger ears than everyone else. In July 1993, James Heathcote, a GP in Bromley, and a group of his colleagues set out to test the observation. They measured the ears of a randomly selected group of 206 of their patients over the age of 30, and calculated that ears increased by an average of 0.22mm per year – a centimetre (or just under half an inch) over 50 years.

Heathcote's findings were backed up by Japanese data published in 1996 and by an Italian study in 1999. The latter concluded that men's ears were significantly larger than women's, that ears did tend to get bigger as people got older, and that the growth occurred in both men and women. Whatever Parris thinks, this is not just an old man issue. It may be that women wear their hair longer, so we are less aware of their ears.

Several reasons have been adduced for the growth. Ears (and indeed noses) sag with age, thanks both to a loss of elasticity in the skin and to the effects of gravity. Earlobes droop, a phenomenon that can be accentuated by heavy earrings. More controversially, it has been suggested that because, unlike bone, cartilage continues to grow and ears are made of cartilage, that may also account for the phenomenon. But the evidence is sketchy, and some researchers argue that cartilage is only being replaced and does not account for the growth in ear size.

The good news for Parris is that plastic surgery can halt much of the drooping, and "lobe jobs" are increasingly common – a snip at a couple of grand. At the moment, it is mainly women who are having it done, to reverse the effects of a lifetime of dangly earrings, but men are sure to follow. Over to you, Matthew. Ear today, gone tomorrow.