Emergency Physician, Educator, Researcher, interested in the microbiome, evolution, and medicine
I. Whales and elephants have many more cells than humans. You might think that they would get more cancer since each cell has an opportunity to accumulate somatic mutations that could lead to cancer. In fact whales and elephants, despite their larger size have lower cancer rates compared to humans. […]
Could not resist posting this link: Colobus monkeys in Uganda appear to engage in self-medication behavior when sick, just like us humans.
Last week we discussed microbes that might make us eat too much. But what about the opposite. Some infections make us want to stop eating. This has practical consequences. If somebody with belly pain in the ER is hungry and can eat (without throwing it all back up!) it makes […]
Probiotic treatment has been shown to decrease anxiety and improve memory in humans. Dinan et al. performed an excellent blinded randomized controlled cross-over design study of probiotic use in healthy male subjects. The probiotic Bifidobacterium longum 1714 given for one month made the treated subjects less anxious and better to […]
We mentioned in the last class that many parasites consume the gonads of their hosts. As an example, the gonad consuming parasite Euhaplorchis californiensis has been described by Kevin Lafferty, a parasitologist at UC Santa Barbara. Read an account of this manipulative parasite here. (Of note, Kevin taught parasitology to […]
Roland Cooper PhD of Dominican University has spent the last several summers in Kampala Uganda studying resistance patterns to the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum. He will be visiting UNM on October 13th and lecturing on the topic of Evolution of Artemisinin Resistance in Plasmodium falciparum malaria. Read his recent article […]
Allergy is on the rise as infection has waned: Over the last half-century, the incidence of many infectious diseases has decreased dramatically (e.g. measles, tuberculosis, rheumatic fever, and hepatitis A) while that for autoimmune-related disorders has reciprocally increased (e.g. multiple sclerosis, Crohn disease, asthma, and Type I diabetes) (Bach 2002). […]
Jeff Leach (photo above from Scientific American – click the image for the link) has re-wilded his gut microbiome by adopting the eating habits of the Hadza, a hunter gatherer group in Tanzania. He also gave himself a fecal transplantation from a Hadza donor…click here for a vivid first hand […]
Here are the articles for the journal club. Start the readings for your group now. Group 1) Bluestone Otitis Media Group 2) Roulette Tobacco Self-medication Group 3) Pagel Naked Ape and Prune Fingers Group 4) Fiusa Causes of Coagulation Each group will present their assigned article on 9/29/15 The goal: […]
Physicians often use abnormal values to diagnose diseases. We often start treatments aimed at making vital signs and lab tests normal. We feel better when we do this. But is it really the best thing for our patients? We will explore the role of normal in this weeks class (much […]
EvolutionMedicine 