Natterson-Horowitz B, Boddy Amy M, Zimmerman Dawn
Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
Arizona Cancer Evolution Center, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85281, USA.
PNAS Nexus. 2022 Apr 14;1(2):pgac044. doi: 10.1093/pnasnexus/pgac044. eCollection 2022 May.
Across the tree of life, female animals share biological characteristics that place them at risk for similar diseases and disorders. Greater awareness of these shared vulnerabilities can accelerate insight and innovation in women's health. We present a broadly comparative approach to female health that can inform issues ranging from mammary, ovarian, and endometrial cancer to preeclampsia, osteoporosis, and infertility. Our focus on female health highlights the interdependence of human, animal, and environmental health. As the boundaries between human and animal environments become blurred, female animals across species are exposed to increasingly similar environmental hazards. As such, the health of female animals has unprecedented relevance to the field of woman's health. Expanding surveillance of animal populations beyond zoonoses to include noncommunicable diseases can strengthen women's health prevention efforts as environmental factors are increasingly implicated in human mortality. The physiology of nonhuman females can also spark innovation in women's health. There is growing interest in those species of which the females appear to have a level of resistance to pathologies that claim millions of human lives every year. These physiologic adaptations highlight the importance of biodiversity to human health. Insights at the intersection of women's health and planetary health can be a rich source of innovations benefitting the health of all animals across the tree of life.
在整个生命之树中,雌性动物具有一些生物学特征,这些特征使它们面临患相似疾病和失调症的风险。对这些共同的易感性有更深入的认识,可以加快对女性健康的洞察和创新。我们提出了一种广泛比较的女性健康研究方法,该方法可以为从乳腺癌、卵巢癌和子宫内膜癌到先兆子痫、骨质疏松症和不孕症等一系列问题提供参考。我们对女性健康的关注突出了人类、动物和环境健康之间的相互依存关系。随着人类和动物环境之间的界限变得模糊,跨物种的雌性动物面临着越来越相似的环境危害。因此,雌性动物的健康与女性健康领域有着前所未有的相关性。将动物种群监测从人畜共患病扩展到包括非传染性疾病,可以加强女性健康预防工作,因为环境因素越来越多地与人类死亡率相关。非人类雌性动物的生理机能也可以激发女性健康领域的创新。人们对某些物种越来越感兴趣,这些物种的雌性似乎对每年夺走数百万人生命的疾病具有一定程度的抵抗力。这些生理适应性突出了生物多样性对人类健康的重要性。女性健康与地球健康交叉领域的见解可以成为丰富的创新源泉,造福生命之树上所有动物的健康。