de Barra Mícheál, Islam M Sirajul, Curtis Val
Environmental Health Group, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, United Kingdom.
Environmental Microbiology Lab, ICDDR,B, Dhaka, Bangladesh.
PLoS One. 2014 Jun 30;9(6):e100444. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0100444. eCollection 2014.
Disgust can be considered a psychological arm of the immune system that acts to prevent exposure to infectious agents. High disgust sensitivity is associated with greater behavioral avoidance of disease vectors and thus may reduce infection risk. A cross-sectional survey in rural Bangladesh provided no strong support for this hypothesis. In many species, the expression of pathogen- and predator-avoidance mechanisms is contingent on early life exposure to predators and pathogens. Using childhood health data collected in the 1990s, we examined if adults with more infectious diseases in childhood showed greater adult disgust sensitivity: no support for this association was found. Explanations for these null finding and possible directions for future research are discussed.
厌恶可被视为免疫系统的一种心理机制，其作用是防止接触传染源。高度的厌恶敏感性与对疾病媒介更强的行为回避相关，因此可能降低感染风险。在孟加拉国农村进行的一项横断面调查并未有力支持这一假设。在许多物种中，病原体和捕食者回避机制的表达取决于早年对捕食者和病原体的接触。利用20世纪90年代收集的儿童健康数据，我们研究了童年时期患传染病较多的成年人是否表现出更高的成年厌恶敏感性：未发现支持这种关联的证据。本文讨论了这些阴性结果的解释以及未来研究的可能方向。
