Your result, the one DNA position behind it, and what the research says.
8/10 confidence.
EDAR directs the formation of structures that grow out of skin during development, including hair follicles, sweat glands and teeth. This variant changes one building block of the protein and raises its signaling activity. The result is a coordinated set of features rather than a single one: thicker individual hair strands, straighter hair, more sweat glands and incisors that are scooped on the inner surface. It arose in East Asia and rose to high frequency there, and it is one of the best-studied examples of a single change reshaping several visible features at once.
Good to know: One change alters hair strand thickness, hair straightness, sweat glands and tooth shape together. Strand thickness is not the same thing as how thick your hair looks overall. The variant is common in East Asia and rare in European and African ancestry.
Fun fact: Mice engineered to carry the human version grow visibly thicker fur and extra sweat glands.
Discovery: The variant was linked to East Asian hair thickness in 2008, and to the scooped shape of the upper front teeth in 2009, both in people. The sweat gland effect came later, from mice engineered in 2013 to carry the human version.
The single variant behind this trait
Gene: EDAR
Location: Chr 2:108,897,145
dbSNP rs3827760
Content updated September 2026.
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