Cardiovascular System
Cardiovascular (CV) disease is the leading killer of our species. Various evolutionary lenses can be applied to better understand human vulnerability to CV disorders. The evolutionary origins of a healthy human heart—its myocardial, electrophysiologic, valvular and vascular systems—offers a history of the selective pressures, trade-offs and adaptations leading to the normal mammalian CV systems. Beyond these evolutionary-developmental perspectives, the application of a framework based on Tinbergen’s four questions offers a novel evolutionary lens for understanding our species’ vulnerability to CV pathology. This is done by a consideration of comparative information about non-human animals who spontaneously develop the same CV diseases. This phylogenetic information can then be used to develop trade-off-based adaptive hypotheses to explain the nature and origins of vulnerability to a range of CV pathologies including atherosclerosis, heart failure, valvular heart disease and arrhythmias.