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Evolutionary Medicine : clinical medicine from an evolutionary perspective

Until recently, the role of evolution in the understanding of treatment and prevention of disease had not been considered by most clinicians, but there is now growing interest in the potential clinical applicability of taking an evolutionary approach towards understanding an array of medical conditions including antibiotic resistance, obesity, psychiatric disorders, autoimmune diseases and cancer. To explore how the evolutionary aspects of health and disease can lead to the improvement of clinical medicine, BMC Medicine has launched an article collection on evolutionary medicine with guest editors Martin Brüne and Ze’ev Hochberg.

  1. Coagulation and innate immunity have been linked together for at least 450 million years of evolution. Sepsis, one of the world’s leading causes of death, is probably the condition in which this evolutionary l...

    Authors: Maiara Marx Luz Fiusa, Marco Antonio Carvalho-Filho, Joyce M Annichino-Bizzacchi and Erich V De Paula
    Citation: BMC Medicine 2015 13:105
  2. The NPC1 gene encodes a protein involved in intracellular lipid trafficking; its second endosomal loop (loop 2) is a receptor for filoviruses. A polymorphism (His215Arg) in NPC1 was associated with obesity in Eur...

    Authors: Nasser M Al-Daghri, Rachele Cagliani, Diego Forni, Majed S Alokail, Uberto Pozzoli, Khalid M Alkharfy, Shaun Sabico, Mario Clerici and Manuela Sironi
    Citation: BMC Medicine 2012 10:140
  3. Brüne's proposal that erstwhile 'vulnerability' genes need to be reconsidered as 'plasticity' genes, given the potential for certain environments to yield increased positive function in the same domain as pote...

    Authors: Rachel Wurzman and James Giordano
    Citation: BMC Medicine 2012 10:37