Brassington Layla, Arner Audrey M, Watowich Marina M, Damstedt Jane, Ng Kee Seong, Lim Yvonne A L, Venkataraman Vivek V, Wallace Ian J, Kraft Thomas S, Lea Amanda J
Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA.
Department of Anthropology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA.
Evol Med Public Health. 2024 Jul 31;12(1):214-226. doi: 10.1093/emph/eoae014. eCollection 2024.
More than 60 years ago, James Neel proposed the Thrifty Genotype Hypothesis to explain the widespread prevalence of type 2 diabetes in Western, industrial contexts. This hypothesis posits that variants linked to conservative energy usage and increased fat deposition would have been favored throughout human evolution due to the advantages they could provide during periods of resource limitation. However, in industrial environments, these variants instead produce an increased risk of obesity, metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes, and related health issues. This hypothesis has been popular and impactful, with thousands of citations, many ongoing debates, and several spin-off theories in biomedicine, evolutionary biology, and anthropology. However, despite great attention, the applicability and utility of the Thrifty Genotype Hypothesis (TGH) to modern human health remains, in our opinion, unresolved. To move research in this area forward, we first discuss the original formulation of the TGH and its critiques. Second, we trace the TGH to updated hypotheses that are currently at the forefront of the evolutionary medicine literature-namely, the Evolutionary Mismatch Hypothesis. Third, we lay out empirical predictions for updated hypotheses and evaluate them against the current literature. Finally, we discuss study designs that could be fruitful for filling current knowledge gaps; here, we focus on partnerships with subsistence-level groups undergoing lifestyle transitions, and we present data from an ongoing study with the Orang Asli of Malaysia to illustrate this point. Overall, we hope this synthesis will guide new empirical research aimed at understanding how the human evolutionary past interacts with our modern environments to influence cardiometabolic health.
60多年前，詹姆斯·尼尔提出了节俭基因型假说，以解释2型糖尿病在西方工业化背景下的广泛流行。该假说认为，与保守的能量使用和脂肪沉积增加相关的基因变异在人类进化过程中会受到青睐，因为它们在资源匮乏时期能带来优势。然而，在工业环境中，这些变异反而会增加肥胖、代谢综合征、2型糖尿病及相关健康问题的风险。这一假说广受欢迎且影响深远，被引用数千次，引发了诸多持续的争论，并在生物医学、进化生物学和人类学领域衍生出了一些相关理论。然而，尽管备受关注，但在我们看来，节俭基因型假说（TGH）对现代人类健康的适用性和实用性仍未得到解决。为推动该领域的研究进展，我们首先讨论TGH的原始表述及其受到的批评。其次，我们将TGH追溯到当前进化医学文献前沿的更新假说——即进化不匹配假说。第三，我们列出更新假说的实证预测，并对照当前文献进行评估。最后，我们讨论可能有助于填补当前知识空白的研究设计；在此，我们重点关注与正在经历生活方式转变的自给自足群体的合作，并展示来自马来西亚原住民奥朗阿斯利人一项正在进行的研究的数据以说明这一点。总体而言，我们希望这一综述能指导新的实证研究，旨在了解人类进化史如何与现代环境相互作用以影响心脏代谢健康。
