Evolutionary Medicine

Evolutionary medicine
 Can my understanding of evolution help me in caring for the health of myself and my
pets? Can it help me understand the body´s response to disease?
Species’ evolutionary history and ecology underlie its anatomy, physiology,

and behavior
 Thus, you and your pet’s evolutionary history and ecology underlie your responses to
diet, illness, pain and medicine
How can evolution help me better understand health and welfare in

animals (and people)
 Different ways of explaining and understanding
o Both mechanistic and evolutionary explanations are needed to provide a full
understanding of any biological process  the body´s reaction to diseases or
stress is part of an evolved defense to protect the body: how much should we
interfere?
 Reproductive success
o Reproductive success may be maximized at the expense of health or survival 
this can be for the host and for the disease
 Constraints and trade-offs
o Evolving one thing may come at a cost to another: evolution doesn´t aim to
eradicate disease, but balances costs and benefits
 Population history (phylogeny)
o Ancestral relationships are important for understanding resistance to disease and
genetic disorders
 Sexual selection
o We might expect different health risks between males and females
 Artificial selection, culture, and new environments
o In domestic species and in people, not everything we see comes from natural
selection and not everything is well adapted to the new environments we place our
animals in. We need to be very careful about using evolutionary explanations in
these cases, and consider alternative explanations
Mechanistic and evolutionary explanations

 Aspects of health, medicine, welfare are usually described and understood only from a
mechanistic point-of-view
 e.g., Why do animals get a fever when they are sick?
o Temperature is ultimately regulated in the hypothalamus. A trigger of the fever,
called a pyrogen (e.g., bacteria or virus), causes release of prostaglandin E2
(PGE2). PGE2 in turn acts on the hypothalamus, which creates a systemic
response in the body, causing heatgenerating effects to match a new higher
temperature set point.
o Yes, but why did evolution favor this reaction of the body, and should we treat it?
o Many infectious agents reproduce quickest at 37 degrees Celsius
o By warming up the body (fever), this slows down how fast the diseases can
reproduce. This is to limit damage from the disease before the immune system
gains control
Iron withholding
 Bacteria need iron to grow
 When you get an infection the body binds iron in the blood to transferrin to make it
unavailable, and reduces iron absorption from the gut
 So sick animals/people often have low iron levels
 The body also uses lactoferrin in milk, tears, and saliva to bind iron
 Licking wounds is beneficial
 Eggs hold their iron in the yolk  the egg white has no iron and contains conalbumin that
binds iron  this is why eggs can stay fresh from spoilage for so long  egg whites used
to be used to treat infections
Vomiting
 Vomiting is the last line of 3 major oral defences against poisons and infections coming
in via the mouth
o Deciding it smells (or looks) bad and not putting it in your mouth
o Deciding it tastes bad and spitting it out before swallowing
o The body dictating a problem after eating and vomiting it up
 Cows and sheep regurgitate food to chew it again
 Birds regurgitate food to feed their babies and they seem perfectly happy to do so
 Being sick and ejecting food from the body evolved because this saved you from being
poisoned
 One early warning symptom of poisoning is dizziness, where the inner ear (balance) is
out of step with the visual input (eyes), as the toxin affects the balance organ very quickly
Itching & scratching

 Removes parasites from the skin
 Need to consider the ability of the animal to reach all parts of its body and how this might
change with illness and age
Pain
 Pain is an evolutionary safety mechanism
 Acute pain tells you to immediately react and remove yourself from the problem to
protect yourself from ongoing damage, or to pay attention to an area that has suffered
damage
 People born without being able to feel pain often die in childhood
 They suffer burns, bite off the end of their tongue, frequently cut themselves, damage
their eyes and suffer broken bones without realizing it
 If pain is localized, then immobilize and protect
o This protects the injured area and allows it to heal while minimizing further
damage. Pain stops the animal from using the area until its stable
 If pain is systemic then sleep and wait
o This allows the animal to channel its resources into repair and fighting infection or
injury. It also limits exposure of other closely related animals in the surrounding
environment to any infectious agents
 Do plants feel pain?
o Plants may react to physical damage with swift physiological changes and be
emitting chemical signals that can be detected and responded by neighbouring
plants  but should we consider that this means they “feel pain”?
o What would be the point of a plant “feeling” pain?  what can it do about it? 
sit there and silently suffer… how would this be favored by natural selection?
o Plants may react to damage… but since they CAN´T remove themselves from the
situation, and thus there is no benefit of this intense motivator  we would not
expect them to “feel” pain
o don’t forget that natural selection won’t give you skills and powers unless you
NEED them….everything costs!
o Can we use these principles of how natural selection works to predict and look for
when we might expect different types of animals, and under what conditions, to
‘experience' pain?
Fear & disgust

 Many species (including humans) have an innate fear or disgust to a number of things that
would have posed a threat during their evolutionary history

Evolutionary Medicine

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Evolutionary Medicine

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Evolutionary medicine

Species’ evolutionary history and ecology underlie its anatomy, physiology,

How can evolution help me better understand health and welfare in

Mechanistic and evolutionary explanations

Itching & scratching

Fear & disgust

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