Pregnancy as a Factor of Adaptive Human Evolution. The Role of Natural Selection in the Origin of Preeclampsia

Abstract

The review discusses the data on the significant role of pregnancy in adaptive evolution of modern humans. In the aspect of evolutionary medicine, the main attention is paid to preeclampsia (PE), a severe hypertensive pathology of pregnancy. The current evolutionary hypotheses about the origin and causes of racial and ethnic variability in the incidence of this pathology in human populations are summarized. Studies that suggest the contribution of adaptive evolution to the formation of a hereditary predisposition to the development of PE are presented. Our results which first showed the significant role of negative selection in the formation of the genetic architecture of PE via the regulatory single nucleotide polymorphisms of new candidate genes for this pathology are demonstrated.