Reitsema Laurie J
Department of Anthropology, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, USA.
Am J Hum Biol. 2025 Jun;37(6):e70073. doi: 10.1002/ajhb.70073.
Typically used to reconstruct diets and migration histories, isotope ratios in human tissues also reflect physiological states associated with health and stress. The publication in 2013 of a paper in the American Journal of Human Biology reviewing such cases has been widely cited. This article revisits this topic and reviews key research exploring the use of isotope ratios as a means for evaluating physiological processes. The review permits a critical evaluation of how scholarly works have engaged with the potential to add physiological factors to well-trodden models of how isotope ratios become fixed in the body by considering recent theoretical trends in the social sciences and conducting a meta-analysis of a select body of literature published in the period of 2013-2024 to see how exactly research has engaged with the topic. This approach reveals that while stable isotope data do have exciting future applications to understanding physiology, stress, and disease states, this potential is still underdeveloped, with published research more often using physiology as a "disclaimer" for unexplained isotope variation than deliberately testing and advancing the potential.
人体组织中的同位素比率通常用于重建饮食和迁徙历史，同时也反映与健康和压力相关的生理状态。2013年发表在美国《人类生物学杂志》上一篇回顾此类案例的论文被广泛引用。本文重新探讨这一主题，并回顾了探索将同位素比率用作评估生理过程手段的关键研究。通过考虑社会科学领域的近期理论趋势，并对2013年至2024年期间发表的一组精选文献进行荟萃分析，以了解研究究竟是如何探讨该主题的，本综述能够对学术著作在将生理因素纳入同位素比率在体内固定的成熟模型方面的潜力进行批判性评估。这种方法表明，虽然稳定同位素数据在理解生理、压力和疾病状态方面确实具有令人兴奋的未来应用潜力，但这种潜力仍未得到充分开发，已发表的研究更多地将生理因素用作对无法解释的同位素变化的“免责声明”，而不是刻意进行测试并推进其潜力。
