Many authors have written about the social and economic risk factors such as poverty, low educational attainment, and discrimination that contribute to global indigenous-nonindigenous disparity. In this work, we consider an additional immunological risk factor — T-helper 2 dominance — that appears to exacerbate the effects of social and economic factors on infectious disease outcomes in tropical zones. To this end, a critical review approach was used to extract published data on total serum IgE — an indicator of T-helper 2 dominance. We found a three-orders-of-magnitude differences in total serum IgE across climate zones (tropical vs. temperate), ecologies within the tropics (forests vs. urban/rural), and clinical conditions (HIGE, TPE, ABAP vs. atopy, and helminthiasis). Additionally, that the highest ever reported total serum IgE levels are reported for tropical regions - mainly, healthy members of forest-dwelling indigenous groups of South America, and patients diagnosed with clinical conditions such as onchocerciasis, tropical pulmonary eosinophilia, and hyper-IgE.
ASU’s Bioarchaeology of Nubia Expedition (BONE) led by Dr. Brenda Baker discovered the remains of a female individual from the Classic Kerma period with a preserved large teratoma containing hard tissue components including two molariform teeth. There are only three previous recorded instances of teratomas in a paleopathological setting.
This study analyzed the characteristics of teeth found within a teratoma and compared them to permanent oral dentition to ascertain the degree to which dental development is affected by local growth environment. Permanent (oral) molars from multiple individuals and 2 teratoma teeth from a singular individual from the BONE site were analyzed alongside a comparative sample of permanent (oral) molars from an unrelated, more modern population. MicroCT scans were used to create digital renditions of the teeth to create 3D and 2D models to analyze the enamel and dentine of the teeth to measure their morphological characteristics. The relative enamel thickness and the absolute occlusal enamel volumes were calculated. The study found that there are significant differences in enamel thickness between the teratoma teeth and any of its oral cavity counterparts.
This study is unique in that it is the first study to analyze teeth from a teratoma to permanent teeth from the oral cavity using 2D and 3D digital dental models created from microCT data. It is also the first study to analyze these morphological characteristics in an archaeological sample.