Report on the 2015 ISEMPH meeting published in Evolutionary Anthropology

Connecting Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health by Nunn, C.L., I. Wallace, C.M. Beall
Evolutionary Anthropology 24: 127-129, 2015.  DOI 10.1002/evan.21451 [link]

This report on the inaugural meeting of the International Society for Evolution, Medicine & Public Health hosted by the ASU Center for Evolutionary Medicine, highlights relevant talks and themes including “evolutionary mismatch”, comparative medicine, infectious disease, and the microbiome. The conference  drew over 300 scientists and scholars from around the world.  Harvey Fineberg, President of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation was the keynote speaker. Rap artist Baba Brinkman’s debut of “The Rap Guide to ^Evolutionary Medicine” was a conference highlight. It is a great teaching resource and well as great entertainment, nexium 20mg  The meeting invigorated the field and paving the way for interdisciplinary collaboration, and a second meeting, scheduled for June 22-25, 2016 in Durham, NC. Details will be sent to ISEMPH members this week. levaquin 500mg

Article text: Many evolutionary anthropologists are actively involved in the emerging field of evolutionary medicine, which is a global, interdisciplinary effort to use evolutionary perspectives to understand and improve human health.Indeed, in today’s world, ecological and evolutionary perspectives are proving increasingly essential for understanding and addressing a wide array of infectious and noninfectious diseases. In evaluating options for cancer therapy, for example, measures of the ecological diversity of precancerous lesions have been used to predict later recurrence of cancer in patients5 because a higher diversity of cells enables tumors to escape chemotherapy. Along similar ecological lines, many of today’s most pressing infectious disease challenges, including Ebola, influenza, and Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome, reflect spillover from other animals, as was the case with HIV and two species of malaria.6–8 Evolutionarily, the rise of resistant microbes presents a worldwide crisis that threatens many of humanity’s most remarkable advances against infectious disease. More rigorous evolutionary modeling is needed to devise better treatments that reduce selective pressures for resistant parasites and pathogens.9 Simultaneously, public health successes against infectious disease are demonstrating how important many of those organisms are for training effective immune responses; their loss is associated with increases in autoimmune diseases and cancers. plavix 75mg