Why does the immune system over-react and sometimes kill us? This is a conundrum that has attracted much attention, at least from evolutionary biologists. One explanation is the smoke detector principle. It is often better to over-react than to under-react. Here is a summary that I wrote in the evolution […]
Over evolutionary time, organisms have had to evolve ways to cope with varying oxygen levels. Hypoxia inducible factor, HIF, is the primary way our bodies respond to changes in oxygen availability. HIF-1 alpha is stabilized during hypoxia, allowing it to reach the cell nucleus and alter the expression of hypoxia […]
Humans and other animals have evolved adaptations to hypoxia, most famously among high altitude people. Oxygen availability, especially at the tissue level, varies at sea level too. Adaptation to hypoxic stress is important in wound healing, defense against infection, and protection from sepsis. Hypoxia stimulated HIF-1α has a key role […]
Is it normal to be hypoxic in the earliest stages of life? Maltepe and Saugstad 2009 write: “It is known that oxygen levels are low in fetal life with saturations as low as 50% or even lower. After birth, arterial oxygen saturation increases slowly and reaches 90% with a median […]
Thymosin α1 is an immune modulating drug that was recently the subject of a large scale multi-center randomized clinical trial in China. Thymosin α1 modulates T-cell function and improves antigen presentation among other things. It had shown promise in multiple single center trials. The most recent by Wu et al. […]
Right before the pandemic upended our lives, Kevin Lozo MD, now a (almost graduated) resident of pediatrics at the University of Pittsburgh, came to the University of New Mexico to part in the UNM Evolutionary Medicine elective, one of the few electives of its kind taught in a US medical […]
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