Emmott, Emily H;
(2024)
Re-examining the adaptive function of nausea and vomiting in pregnancy.
Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health
, 12
(1)
pp. 97-104.
10.1093/emph/eoae012.
(In press).
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Abstract
Nausea and vomiting in pregnancy (NVP) has been proposed to have a prophylactic function. In this commentary, I re-examine NVP from an evolutionary perspective in light of new research on NVP. First, current evidence suggests that the observed characteristics of NVP does not align well with a prophylactic function. Further, NVP is typically associated with high costs for pregnant women, while moderate-to-severe NVP is associated with increased risks of poorer foetal/birth outcomes. In contrast, mild NVP limited to early pregnancy may associate with improved foetal outcomes – indicating a potential evolutionary benefit. Second, researchers have recently identified growth differentiation factor 15 (GDF15) to cause NVP, with implications that low-levels of pre-conception GDF15 (associated with lower cellular stress/inflammation) may increase risks/symptoms of NVP. If so, NVP in contemporary post-industrialised populations may be more severe due to environmental mismatch, and the current symptomology of NVP in such populations should not be viewed as a typical experience of pregnancy.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Re-examining the adaptive function of nausea and vomiting in pregnancy |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1093/emph/eoae012 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1093/emph/eoae012 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Foundation for Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
| Keywords: | Public Health and Epidemiology, Evolutionary Biology |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Dept of Anthropology |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10194537 |
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