Evolutionary Medicine

Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution. Evolutionary, or darwinian, medicine takes the view that contemporary diseases result from incompatibility between the conditions under which the evolutionary pressure had modified our genetic endowment and the lifestyle and dietary habits in which we are currently living, including the enhanced lifespan, the changes in dietary habits and the lack of physical activity.

Pregnancy offers a window of opportunity to program the future health of both mothers and offspring. During gestation, women experience a series of physical and metabolic modifications and adaptations, which aim to protect the fetus development and are closely related to both pre-gestational nutritional status and gestational weight gain

Epidemiologic and clinical research has provided a large body of evidence supporting the developmental origins of health and disease (DOHaD), but there has been a relative dearth of mechanistic studies in humans due to the complexity of working with large, longitudinal cohorts. Nonetheless, animal models of undernutrition have provided substantial evidence for the potential epigenetic, metabolic, and endocrine mechanisms behind DOHaD

Association between nutritional deprivation early in life and risk for nutrition-related chronic diseases,

Association between poor nutrition early in life and mental health and cognitive development

Advances over the past century in kidney physiology, genetics, and development have elucidated many aspects of nephron formation, structure and function. Parallel advances have been achieved in evolutionary biology, with the emergence of evolutionary medicine, a discipline that promises to provide new insight into the treatment of chronic disease

Close to a century ago a Tanzanian medicine man, Babu Kalunde, discovered an important treatment that saved the lives of many people in his village, who were suffering an epidemic of a dysentery-like illness. He learned about the potential medicinal value of a plant known to the WaTongwe as mulengelele by observing a similarly sick young porcupine ingest the roots of the plant. Before these opportune observations, Babu Kalunde and the people of his village had avoided this plant, which they knew to be highly poisonous. After telling the villagers his story of the porcupine, however—and taking small doses of the plant himself—he persuaded them to use the plant on the sick.