Evolution and Medicine. Medical School Outline January 2007.
Introduction to evolution and natural selection
Impact upon the patient?
Suppression of natural selection in humans. Sociologically good, medically?
Factors contributing to an aging human population: sanitation, nutrition, inoculation, antibiotics.
The evolution of intelligence. Is this a positive selection trait in survival?
The role of infectious disease and parasites in evolution: parasites as mediators (selective factors) of radiative host traits
Malaria, sickle cell anemia and -thalessemia.
Cell surface glycoproteins.
Phase I/II metabolism. Evolution based on dietary links - importance in drug metabolism. Pharmacogenetics in the making.
Cytochrome p450 and Warfarin
Alcohol metabolism - ethnic differences
Selective pressures of leading an oxidative life-style. Diseases of aging and oxidative stress.
Sunlight and the migration of African and Northern European populations; vitamin D, UV and tuberculosis
Cancer chemoprevention - drugs versus neutraceutics
Inbreeding and the maintenance of recessive traits.
ABCA1 cholesterol metabolism and Tangier disease
ABC transporter gene family, mutations and disease
New plagues. How does natural selection influence virulence (host/pathogen relationship)?
Evolutionary advantages of cough, fever, diarrhea. Are drugs that control these good for you?
HIV; bird flu; SARS; influenza. Are we poised for another plague; media hype or reality?
Infectious transmission? The bacterial transposon and antibiotic resistance. Similarities to cancer drug resistance.
Darwin
The frequent use of any organ, when confirmed by habit, increases the functions of that organ, leads to its development,
and endows it with a size and power that it does not possess in animals which exercise it less.
Lamarck
Wallace
Darwin ’s great insight that the vast diversity of life on earth arose over time from a common
ancestor revolutionized scientific understanding, with