Browsing by Autor "Paul L. Hooper"

Now showing 1 - 11 of 11

Arterial Stiffness in Heart‐Healthy Indigenous Tsimane Forager‐Horticulturalists
(Wiley, 2025) Tianyu Cao; Edhitt Cortez Linares; Raúl Quispe Gutierrez; Daniel Eid Rodríguez; Juana Bani Cuata; Michael I. Miyamoto; Christopher von Rueden; Daniel K. Cummings; Paul L. Hooper; Benjamin C. Trumble
Tsimane forager-farmers of the Bolivian Amazon demonstrate substantially lower arterial stiffness throughout adulthood than more urbanized and sedentary populations, and the differences are only partially explained by conventional cardiometabolic risk factors.
Brain volume, energy balance, and cardiovascular health in two nonindustrial South American populations
(National Academy of Sciences, 2023) Hillard Kaplan; Paul L. Hooper; Margaret Gatz; Wendy J. Mack; Emma Law; Helena C. Chui; M. Linda Sutherland; James D. Sutherland; Christopher J. Rowan; L. Samüel Wann
Little is known about brain aging or dementia in nonindustrialized environments that are similar to how humans lived throughout evolutionary history. This paper examines brain volume (BV) in middle and old age among two indigenous South American populations, the Tsimane and Moseten, whose lifestyles and environments diverge from those in high-income nations. With a sample of 1,165 individuals aged 40 to 94, we analyze population differences in cross-sectional rates of decline in BV with age. We also assess the relationships of BV with energy biomarkers and arterial disease and compare them against findings in industrialized contexts. The analyses test three hypotheses derived from an evolutionary model of brain health, which we call the embarrassment of riches (EOR). The model hypothesizes that food energy was positively associated with late life BV in the physically active, food-limited past, but excess body mass and adiposity are now associated with reduced BV in industrialized societies in middle and older ages. We find that the relationship of BV with both non-HDL cholesterol and body mass index is curvilinear, positive from the lowest values to 1.4 to 1.6 SDs above the mean, and negative from that value to the highest values. The more acculturated Moseten exhibit a steeper decrease in BV with age than Tsimane, but still shallower than US and European populations. Lastly, aortic arteriosclerosis is associated with lower BV. Complemented by findings from the United States and Europe, our results are consistent with the EOR model, with implications for interventions to improve brain health.
Childhood skeletal lesions common in prehistory are present in living forager-farmers and predict adult markers of immune function
(American Association for the Advancement of Science, 2025) Amy Anderson; Aaron D. Blackwell; M Linda Sutherland; Thomas S. Kraft; J. D. Sutherland; Bret Beheim; Daniel K. Cummings; Suhail Ghafoor; Paul L. Hooper; Daniel Eid Rodríguez
Porous cranial lesions (cribra cranii and cribra orbitalia) are widely used by archaeologists as skeletal markers of poor child health. However, their use has not been validated with systematic data from contemporary populations, where there has been little evidence of these lesions or their health relevance. Using 375 in vivo computed tomography scans from a cohort-representative sample of adults aged 40+ years from the Bolivian Amazon, among food-limited, high-mortality forager-farmers, we identified cribra cranii on 46 (12.3%) and cribra orbitalia on 23 (6%). Cribra orbitalia was associated with several hallmarks of compromised immune function, including fewer B cells, fewer naïve CD4+ T cells, a lower CD4+/CD8+ T cell ratio, and higher tuberculosis risk. However, neither lesion type predicted other physician-diagnosed respiratory diseases, other markers of cell-mediated immunity, or hemoglobin values. While cribra orbitalia shows promise as a skeletal indicator of health challenges, our findings do not support the continued practice of using these lesions to infer anemia in adults.
Health costs of reproduction are minimal despite high fertility, mortality and subsistence lifestyle
(Nature Portfolio, 2016) Michael Gurven; Megan Costa; Benjamin C. Trumble; Jonathan Stieglitz; Bret Beheim; Daniel Eid Rodríguez; Paul L. Hooper; Hillard Kaplan
Apolipoprotein- ε 4 is associated with higher fecundity in a natural fertility population
(American Association for the Advancement of Science, 2023) Benjamin C. Trumble; Mia Charifson; Thomas S. Kraft; Angela R. García; Daniel K. Cummings; Paul L. Hooper; Amanda J. Lea; Daniel Eid Rodríguez; Stephanie V. Koebele; Kenneth H. Buetow
In many populations, the apolipoprotein-ε4 (APOE-ε4) allele increases the risk for several chronic diseases of aging, including dementia and cardiovascular disease; despite these harmful effects at later ages, the APOE-ε4 allele remains prevalent. We assess the impact of APOE-ε4 on fertility and its proximate determinants (age at first reproduction, interbirth interval) among the Tsimane, a natural fertility population of forager-horticulturalists. Among 795 women aged 13 to 90 (20% APOE-ε4 carriers), those with at least one APOE-ε4 allele had 0.3 to 0.5 more children than (ε3/ε3) homozygotes, while those with two APOE-ε4 alleles gave birth to 1.4 to 2.1 more children. APOE-ε4 carriers achieve higher fertility by beginning reproduction 0.8 years earlier and having a 0.23-year shorter interbirth interval. Our findings add to a growing body of literature suggesting a need for studies of populations living in ancestrally relevant environments to assess how alleles that are deleterious in sedentary urban environments may have been maintained by selection throughout human evolutionary history.
Indirect genetic effects among neighbors promote cooperation and accelerate adaptation in a small-scale human society
(American Association for the Advancement of Science, 2025) Jordan S. Martin; Bret Beheim; Michael Gurven; Hillard Kaplan; Jonathan Stieglitz; Benjamin C. Trumble; Paul L. Hooper; Daniel K. Cummings; Daniel Eid Rodríguez; Adrian V. Jaeggi
Explaining the rapid evolution of human cooperation and its role in our species' biodemographic success remains a major evolutionary puzzle. To address this challenge, we tested a social drive hypothesis, which predicts that social plasticity and social selection in human groups cause indirect genetic effects that accelerate the adaptation of fitness, promoting population growth via feedback between the environmental causes and evolutionary consequences of cooperation. Using Bayesian multilevel models to analyze fertility data from a small-scale society, we demonstrate that density- and frequency-dependent indirect genetic effects on fitness promote the evolution of cooperation among neighboring women, increasing the rate of contemporary adaptation by ~5×. Our results show how interactions between the genetic and socioecological processes shaping cooperation in reproduction can drive rapid growth and social evolution in human populations.
Metapopulation dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 transmission in a small-scale Amazonian society
(Public Library of Science, 2023) Thomas S. Kraft; Edmond Seabright; Sarah Alami; Samuel M. Jenness; Paul L. Hooper; Bret Beheim; Helen Davis; Daniel K. Cummings; Daniel Eid Rodríguez; Maguin Gutierrez Cayuba
The severity of infectious disease outbreaks is governed by patterns of human contact, which vary by geography, social organization, mobility, access to technology and healthcare, economic development, and culture. Whereas globalized societies and urban centers exhibit characteristics that can heighten vulnerability to pandemics, small-scale subsistence societies occupying remote, rural areas may be buffered. Accordingly, voluntary collective isolation has been proposed as one strategy to mitigate the impacts of COVID-19 and other pandemics on small-scale Indigenous populations with minimal access to healthcare infrastructure. To assess the vulnerability of such populations and the viability of interventions such as voluntary collective isolation, we simulate and analyze the dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 infection among Amazonian forager-horticulturalists in Bolivia using a stochastic network metapopulation model parameterized with high-resolution empirical data on population structure, mobility, and contact networks. Our model suggests that relative isolation offers little protection at the population level (expected approximately 80% cumulative incidence), and more remote communities are not conferred protection via greater distance from outside sources of infection, due to common features of small-scale societies that promote rapid disease transmission such as high rates of travel and dense social networks. Neighborhood density, central household location in villages, and household size greatly increase the individual risk of infection. Simulated interventions further demonstrate that without implausibly high levels of centralized control, collective isolation is unlikely to be effective, especially if it is difficult to restrict visitation between communities as well as travel to outside areas. Finally, comparison of model results to empirical COVID-19 outcomes measured via seroassay suggest that our theoretical model is successful at predicting outbreak severity at both the population and community levels. Taken together, these findings suggest that the social organization and relative isolation from urban centers of many rural Indigenous communities offer little protection from pandemics and that standard control measures, including vaccination, are required to counteract effects of tight-knit social structures characteristic of small-scale populations.
Natural selection of immune and metabolic genes associated with health in two lowland Bolivian populations
(National Academy of Sciences, 2022) Amanda J. Lea; Angela R. García; Jesusa M.G. Arevalo; Julien F. Ayroles; Kenneth H. Buetow; Steve W. Cole; Daniel Eid Rodríguez; Maguin Gutierrez; Heather M. Highland; Paul L. Hooper
A growing body of work has addressed human adaptations to diverse environments using genomic data, but few studies have connected putatively selected alleles to phenotypes, much less among underrepresented populations such as Amerindians. Studies of natural selection and genotype-phenotype relationships in underrepresented populations hold potential to uncover previously undescribed loci underlying evolutionarily and biomedically relevant traits. Here, we worked with the Tsimane and the Moseten, two Amerindian populations inhabiting the Bolivian lowlands. We focused most intensively on the Tsimane, because long-term anthropological work with this group has shown that they have a high burden of both macro and microparasites, as well as minimal cardiometabolic disease or dementia. We therefore generated genome-wide genotype data for Tsimane individuals to study natural selection, and paired this with blood mRNA-seq as well as cardiometabolic and immune biomarker data generated from a larger sample that included both populations. In the Tsimane, we identified 21 regions that are candidates for selective sweeps, as well as 5 immune traits that show evidence for polygenic selection (e.g., C-reactive protein levels and the response to coronaviruses). Genes overlapping candidate regions were strongly enriched for known involvement in immune-related traits, such as abundance of lymphocytes and eosinophils. Importantly, we were also able to draw on extensive phenotype information for the Tsimane and Moseten and link five regions (containing PSD4, MUC21 and MUC22, TOX2, ANXA6, and ABCA1) with biomarkers of immune and metabolic function. Together, our work highlights the utility of pairing evolutionary analyses with anthropological and biomedical data to gain insight into the genetic basis of health-related traits.
Physical activity mediates age differences in cognition among Tsimane forager-horticulturalists
(Oxford University Press, 2025) Phoebe Imms; Nikhil N. Chaudhari; Daniel K. Cummings; Daniel Eid Rodríguez; Giuseppe Barisano; Paul L. Hooper; M. Katherine Sayre; Edmond Seabright; Randall C. Thompson; M. Linda Sutherland
Among Tsimane males, who are more physically active than Tsimane females, the association between age and cognition via BV is significantly mediated by physical activity. Among Tsimane females, mediation occurs directly via physical activity, bypassing BV. These results suggest that mechanisms of cognitive differences across ages differ by sex and population. Studying the relationship between brain atrophy and lifestyle in nonindustrialized populations elucidates biological and environmental correlates of brain health.
Poor Oral Health Is Associated With Inflammation, Aortic Valve Calcification, and Brain Volume Among Forager-Farmers
(Oxford University Press, 2024) Benjamin C. Trumble; Matthew Schwartz; Andrew T. Ozga; Gary T. Schwartz; Christopher M. Stojanowski; Carrie L. Jenkins; Thomas S. Kraft; Angela R. García; Daniel K. Cummings; Paul L. Hooper
Poor oral health is associated with cardiovascular disease and dementia. Potential pathways include sepsis from oral bacteria, systemic inflammation, and nutritional deficiencies. However, in post-industrialized populations, links between oral health and chronic disease may be confounded because the lower socioeconomic exposome (poor diet, pollution, and low physical activity) often entails insufficient dental care. We assessed tooth loss, caries, and damaged teeth, in relation to cardiovascular and brain aging among the Tsimane, a subsistence population living a relatively traditional forager-horticulturalist lifestyle with poor dental health, but minimal cardiovascular disease and dementia. Dental health was assessed by a physician in 739 participants aged 40-92 years with cardiac and brain health measured by chest computed tomography (CT; n = 728) and brain CT (n = 605). A subset of 356 individuals aged 60+ were also assessed for dementia and mild cognitive impairment (n = 33 impaired). Tooth loss was highly prevalent, with 2.2 teeth lost per decade and a 2-fold greater loss in women. The number of teeth with exposed pulp was associated with higher inflammation, as measured by cytokine levels and white blood cell counts, and lower body mass index. Coronary artery calcium and thoracic aortic calcium were not associated with tooth loss or damaged teeth. However, aortic valve calcification and brain tissue loss were higher in those who had more teeth with exposed pulp. Overall, these results suggest that dental health is associated with indicators of chronic diseases in the absence of typical confounds, even in a population with low cardiovascular and dementia risk factors.
Rapidly declining body temperature in a tropical human population
(American Association for the Advancement of Science, 2020) Michael Gurven; Thomas S. Kraft; Sarah Alami; Juan Copajira Adrian; Edhitt Cortez Linares; Daniel K. Cummings; Daniel Eid Rodríguez; Paul L. Hooper; Adrian V. Jaeggi; Raúl Quispe Gutierrez
Normal human body temperature (BT) has long been considered to be 37.0°C. Yet, BTs have declined over the past two centuries in the United States, coinciding with reductions in infection and increasing life expectancy. The generality of and reasons behind this phenomenon have not yet been well studied. Here, we show that Bolivian forager-farmers (n = 17,958 observations of 5481 adults age 15+ years) inhabiting a pathogen-rich environment exhibited higher BT when first examined in the early 21st century (~37.0°C). BT subsequently declined by ~0.05°C/year over 16 years of socioeconomic and epidemiological change to ~36.5°C by 2018. As predicted, infections and other lifestyle factors explain variation in BT, but these factors do not account for the temporal declines. Changes in physical activity, body composition, antibiotic usage, and thermal environment are potential causes of the temporal decline.