Testing an Ethnobiological Evolutionary Hypothesis on Plant-Based Remedies to Treat Malaria in Africa

• Published in: Evolutionary biology 2017-06, Vol.44 (2), p.216-226
• Main Authors: Santoro, Flávia Rosa, Santos, Gilney Charll, Ferreira Júnior, Washington Soares, da Silva Chaves, Leonardo, Araújo, Thiago Antonio Sousa, Nascimento, Andre Luiz Borba, Sobral, André, Silva, Josivan Soares, Campos, Juliana Loureiro Almeida, Albuquerque, Ulysses Paulino
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adaptation; Agriculture; Analysis; Animal Genetics and Genomics; Anopheles; Biomedical and Life Sciences; Deforestation; Developmental Biology; Disease control; Ecology; Environmental changes; Evolution; Evolutionary Biology; Health care; Herbal medicine; Human Genetics; Hypotheses; Life Sciences; Malaria; Medical equipment; Medicinal plants; Medicine, Botanic; Medicine, Herbal; Physiological apparatus; Plants; Population genetics; Research Article
• ISSN: 0071-3260; 1934-2845
• DOI: 10.1007/s11692-016-9400-9

The malaria hypothesis, which addresses a strong selective pressure on human genes resulting from a chain of processes that originated with the practice of agriculture, is an example of an evolutionary consequence of niche construction. This scenario has led us to formulate the following questions: Are the genetic adaptations of populations with a history of contact with malaria reflected in the local medical systems? Likewise, could environmental changes (deforestation) and the incidence of malaria result in an adaptive response in these local health care systems? We collected secondary data for the entire African continent from different databases and secondary sources and measured the response of health care systems as the variation in the richness of antimalarial medicinal plants. Our results did not indicate a cause-and-effect relationship between the tested variables and the medical systems, but a subsequent analysis of variance showed an increase in the mean of medicinal plants in regions with a higher incidence of malaria prior to disease control measures. We suggest that this response had a greater impact on local medical knowledge than other variables, such as genetic frequency and deforestation.