ReviewAmerican journal of human biology : the official journal of the Human Biology Council
Evolutionary adaptation to high altitude: a view from in utero.
Review in American journal of human biology : the official journal of the Human Biology Council. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 33 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
33 citing papers in PubMed, 98 citations in OpenAlex.
- Understanding physiological adaptations of pregnancy to the chronic hypoxia of high altitude to inform obstetrical and neonatal care.Physiological reviews · 2026Review
- High-elevation adaptation and gestational hypoxia jointly shape vascular development in a rodent placenta.The Journal of physiology · 2025Article
- Altitude and risk of pre-eclampsia: insights from a large-scale epidemiological study in Ecuador.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Rethinking altitude and child growth: evidence from a multi-altitude study in Tibet.Frontiers in nutrition · 2025Article
- Article
- Comparative Study of Complete Blood Count Between High-Altitude and Sea-Level Residents in West Saudi Arabia.Cureus · 2023Article
- Adaptive structural and functional evolution of the placenta protects fetal growth in high-elevation deer mice.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Clotting factor genes are associated with preeclampsia in high-altitude pregnant women in the Peruvian Andes.American journal of human genetics · 2022Article
- Seasonality and Sex-Biased Fluctuation of Birth Weight in Tibetan Populations.Phenomics (Cham, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- Population history and genome wide association studies of birth weight in a native high altitude Ladakhi population.PloS one · 2022Article
- Metabolomics reveals potential plateau adaptability by regulating inflammatory response and oxidative stress-related metabolism and energy metabolism pathways in yak.Journal of animal science and technology · 2022Article
- Article
- Evaluation of Linear Growth at Higher Altitudes.JAMA pediatrics · 2020Article
- Multi-Omics Analysis Reveals Up-Regulation of APR Signaling, LXR/RXR and FXR/RXR Activation Pathways in Holstein Dairy Cows Exposed to High-Altitude Hypoxia.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2019Article
- Population History and Altitude-Related Adaptation in the Sherpa.Frontiers in physiology · 2019Review
- The highs and lows of programmed cardiovascular disease by developmental hypoxia: studies in the chicken embryo.The Journal of physiology · 2018Review
- Gestational Hypoxia and Developmental Plasticity.Physiological reviews · 2018Review
- Brain oxygenation declines in elite Kenyan runners during a maximal interval training session.European journal of applied physiology · 2017Article
- Time Domains of the Hypoxic Ventilatory Response and Their Molecular Basis.Comprehensive Physiology · 2016Review
- Elevation of Circulating miR-210-3p in High-Altitude Hypoxic Environment.Frontiers in physiology · 2016Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
A primary focus within biological anthropology has been to elucidate the processes of evolutionary adaptation. Frisancho helped to move anthropology towards more mechanistic explanations of human adaptation by drawing attention to the importance of the functional relevance of human variation. Using the natural laboratory of high altitude, he and others asked whether the unique physiology of indigenous high-altitude residents was the result of acclimatization, developmental plasticity, and/or genetic adaptation in response to the high-altitude environment. We approach the question of human adaptation to high altitude from a somewhat unique vantage point; namely, by examining physiological characteristics-pregnancy and pregnancy outcome-which are closely associated with reproductive fitness. Here we review the potent example of high-altitude native population's resistance to hypoxia-associated reductions in birth weight, which is often associated with higher infant morbidity and mortality at high altitude. With the exception of two recent publications, these comparative birth weight studies have utilized surnames, self-identification, and/or linguistic characteristics to assess ancestry, and none have linked 'advantageous' phenotypes to specific genetic variations. Recent advancements in genetic and statistical tools have enabled us to assess individual ancestry with higher resolution, identify the genetic basis of complex phenotypes and to infer the effect of natural selection on specific gene regions. Using these technologies our studies are now directed to determine the genetic variations that underlie the mechanisms by which high-altitude ancestry protects fetal growth and, in turn, to further our understanding of evolutionary processes involved in human adaptation to high altitude.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.