The human relationship with the macrobiome
This is one of the best things I have read in a long time. Pity Earth’s Creatures by Edward Hoagland
Evolutionary Medicine and Chronic Inflammation
R. Straub published an article entitled Evolutionary medicine and chronic inflammatory state–known and new concepts in pathophysiology last year in which he argues that chronic inflammatory diseases – responsible for the bulk of cardiovascular disease in humans – are caused by re-directed energy stores to the activated immune system. Re-allocation […]
Chocolate in line with the nutrient signaling hypothesis
Last year, we published Nutrient Signaling: Evolutionary Origins of the Immune-Modulating Effects of Dietary Fat, which hypothesized that nutrients with beneficial effects on the microbiome will evolve anti-inflammatory signaling functions. Lucky for chocolate lovers, cocoa follows this prediction. Polyphenols, especially catechin, in chocolate generate anti-inflammatory signaling, and have beneficial effects […]
Longevity in ancient humans
I key question for the study of the evolutionary biology of human aging is: just how long did ancient humans live? Most recent anthropological data suggest that pre-modern humans who survived to adulthood had a good chance of living to age 60 or beyond. Read more here
Fascinating link between sleep and weight gain
Tara Parker Pope has a good summary of recent sleep research showing that modest loss of sleep causes impressive weight gain, in addition to raising the metabolic rate! I think there are evolutionary insights to be made here: namely, that sleep is tightly linked with immune investment and the risk […]
Probiotics might be useful tool in combating drug resistant bacteria
A new study – using a mouse model – suggests that probiotic bacteria might be helpful in the fight against resistance evolution. Read on here.
Heart Disease in Mummies
John Hawks’ write-up about a recent Lancet publication on the use of CT to evaluate atherosclerosis in the ancients is worth a read. Mummies had significant heart disease, raising questions about the role of gene-environment mismatch in causing chronic diseases. Perhaps modern changes are not as important as we thought […]
The Simple Invisible
This quote caught my eye, lifted from the New York Times’ Sean Carroll today: “One of my favorite observations about scientific progress was offered by the Nobel physicist Jean Baptiste Perrin, who said that the key to any advance was to be able “to explain the complex visible by some […]
Killer bugs on NPR
NPR.org has a segment on the alarming rise of multi-drug resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae. And more here. The evolution of MDR Klebsiella is of course a man-made phenomenon. Antibiotic overuse has resulted in the evolution of resistance in bacteria from Acinobacter to Yersinia. Klebsiella pneumoniae and Enterobacteriaceae are examples of hospital-acquired pathogens […]
Fat and Evolution
Interesting items from David Allison’s Obesity and Energetics Offerings http://www.soph.uab.edu/energetics/home Energetics, Ecology & Evolution Fat or lean: Adjustment of endogenous energy stores to predictable and unpredictable changes in allostatic load. Click Here Allometry of thermal variables in mammals: consequences of body size and phylogeny. Click Here Experimental demonstration of the […]
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