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CC BY V4.0, Open Access
Thesis
ASSOCIATIONS AMONG PROXIES FOR PATHOGEN STRESS AND CONSUMPTION OF PLANT SECONDARY COMPOUNDS: A COUNTRY-LEVEL ANALYSIS
Washington State University
Master of Arts (MA), Washington State University
01/2022
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7273/000004472
Handle:
https://hdl.handle.net/2376/125182
Abstract
Self-medication is the consumption of toxic plant secondary compounds in response to pathogen risk and infection. In animals, research initially focused on large-brained vertebrates that consumed novel plant toxins via associative learning. However, recent studies on insects have shown that self-medication can also be an 'innate' behavior mediated by still unclear immunity pathways. Among humans, self-medication is thought to be primarily a cultural or learned behavior, but an evolved behavioral response to self-medicate in response to pathogen risk and infection is conceivable. In this exploratory study, the consumption of toxic plant secondary compounds such as common drugs, stimulants, and spices was tested as a dependent variable in response to proxy measures of pathogen stress at the country level. Unique to studies on human self-medication were measures of spice, drug, and food consumption using actual quantities available domestically for human consumption at the country level. Additionally, a pathogen stress variable was created using a principal component analysis of disability-adjusted life years of various infectious diseases. Results from several linear mixed effects models for each medicative substance indicate that tobacco use, spice consumption, and alcohol consumption were positively associated with some proxies of pathogen stress, whereas coffee and tea were not. This study provides greater insight into the validity of different proxy measures for pathogen stress and a first attempt at analyzing the consumption of multiple toxic plant secondary compounds in response to pathogen stress among humans at the country level.
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Details
- Title
- ASSOCIATIONS AMONG PROXIES FOR PATHOGEN STRESS AND CONSUMPTION OF PLANT SECONDARY COMPOUNDS
- Creators
- John Luke Martello
- Contributors
- Edward H Hagen (Advisor)Marsha B Quinlan (Committee Member)Aaron D Blackwell (Committee Member)
- Awarding Institution
- Washington State University
- Academic Unit
- Anthropology, Department of
- Theses and Dissertations
- Master of Arts (MA), Washington State University
- Publisher
- Washington State University
- Number of pages
- 84
- Identifiers
- 99900882027501842
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Thesis