Thursday 30 May 2019

Do human populations differ in core body temperature?



Human body temperature is a very complex and tightly regulated system. Hypothermia or fever of only 1-2K (i.e. changes of about 5%) already cause major symptoms and changes of 3-4K (i.e. about 10%) are life threatening. Many humans live under relatively cold outside temperature conditions and maintaining an inside 36-37 degree C in these conditions is very energy consuming (most probably a reason why the body temperature in the periphery is several degrees lower), indicating very strong evolutionary constraints on not changing the core temperature too much (I remember a professor in biology classes in university saying that most fungi have a growth minimum around 37 degree C). However, other mammals have higher or lower body temperatures than humans which suggests that the 36-37 degree C of humans are not a universal gold standard (in mammals).


Probably, for a long time in hominin evolution maintaining the core body temperature was not extremely energy consuming due to tropical conditions. This could have changed during the out-of-Africa migration some 100-60 thousand years ago. Of course this is somewhat difficult assess because early modern humans started to wear protective clothing. In fact, wearing clothes is a most probably adaptive trait to save energy while maintaining core body temperature. Still, it is unclear to me whether physiological adaptations took place as well. Furthermore, there is considerable variation between individuals and also within individuals, the latter in response to environmental conditions and/or behaviour (e.g. exercise), which in principle allows natural selection to change the trait and also shows that slight shifts in body temperature are not harmful individuals.


My question is: Are there significant differences in core body temperature between human populations? Please note that my questions is not why the (average?) human core body temperature has this particular value or why it is different from other mammals or birds.


There is a somewhat related question (also on Skeptics.SE) about lower core body temperature in Japanese people. As far as I know, this difference is rather a measurement thing than a real biological difference, so my question remains unanswered.




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