Abstract
Progress in the biomedical and clinical sciences has relied heavily on experimental animal research. However, the impact of other comparative disciplines such as evolutionary biology, and in particular its subdisciplines of life history biology and ecological developmental biology, on human medicine has been limited. Despite its heritage and contributions, evolutionary biology has rarely been applied to understanding human development, particularly from a medical rather than an anthropological perspective.
Highlights
Progress in the biomedical and clinical sciences has relied heavily on experimental animal research
This gap in applying evolutionary biology to medicine has started to close, with a growing recognition that this discipline is critical to understanding the human condition and the risks of health and disease
Randolph Nesse and colleagues have proposed that evolutionary biology and “evolutionary medicine” should be a core discipline of medical training [1]
Summary
This Perspective discusses the following new study published in PLoS Medicine: Núñez de la Mora A, Chatterton RT, Choudhury OA, Napolitano DA, Bentley GR (2007) Childhood conditions influence adult progesterone levels. There is evidence, from both experimental and epidemiological studies, that fetal undernutrition accelerates the age of menarche, if later childhood nutrition is good [13,16,17] This dichotomy can be seen within the same cohort, and in life history terms can be explained as two different maturational signals—that before birth signalling a later threatening world in which gene flow is protected by early reproductive competence, and a postnatal override that samples nutritional status as an indication of whether current energy provision is sufficient to sustain pregnancy. The set point of this relationship can be modified by prenatal energetic constraints, since the ovarian function of women born thinner, and with predictive adaptations towards success in a harsher environment, is more sensitive to physical workload than that of women of greater fatness at birth [19]
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