Abstract Biocultural approaches recognize the pervasiveness and dynamism of interactions between biological and cultural phenomena, and they explicitly strive to integrate biological, sociocultural, environmental, and other kinds of data. They have been part of human biology at least since 1958, when Frank Livingstone so elegantly explained the linkages among population growth, subsistence strategy, and the distribution of the sickle cell gene in West Africa. These approaches developed further with the advent of human adaptability studies in the 1960s as part of the Human Biological Program and have become increasingly focused on understanding the impacts of everyday life on human biological variation. Biocultural approaches generate explanations that are intuitively appealing to many because they offer a kind of holistic view. They can, however, be very challenging approaches to implement, perhaps in part because we are more experienced in measuring the biological than the cultural. Some of the challenges include (1) defining precisely what we mean by constructs like socioeconomic status, poverty, rural, and urban; (2) operationalizing key variables so that they can be measured in ways that are ethnographically valid as well as replicable; (3) defining and measuring multiple causal pathways. In this paper, I briefly review the history of biocultural approaches and then illustrate some of the challenges that these approaches present with examples from my own research on nutrition and energetics as well as that of other practitioners. Am. J. Hum. Biol. 18:1-9, 2006. © 2005 Wiley-Liss, Inc. Received: 29 August 2005; Accepted: 19 September 2005

The cultural and sociological factors that determine our patterns of drinking may date back thousands of years.4 As such, the Licensing Act 2005 was always unlikely to transform the culture of feast drinking to that of a Mediterranean society. Similarly, other options to reduce harm favoured by government and the alcohol industry—education and public information—don’t seem to change drinking behaviour or to reduce alcohol related harm.5 6 So, can we justify trying tougher measures to reduce alcohol related harm—particularly to health—and is there any evidence to show they would work?

Among industrialized nations, the rate of rehospitalization in the United States for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is approximately 30 per 1000, exceptions being noted for American Indians and Alaskan natives, two ethnic groups who tend toward higher rates of RSV hospitalization. In distinction Japan reports an admission rate of 60 per 1000 for RSV disease. Yet Japan ranks considerably lower than many of its western counterparts in premature births. Whether an RSV subtype, a new viral genotype or some other unifying characteristic exists that might explain the severity of adenovirus, parainfluenza and RSV infections in this region of Asia remains to be determined. Outcomes trials in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Denmark and Japan all identified crowding and exposure to tobacco smoke as significant and independent risk factors for disease severity of RSV. The epidemiology of RSV is largely consistent throughout Europe, with peak outbreaks occurring in December and January. In Europe RSV accounts for 42 to 45% of hospital admissions for lower respiratory tract infections in children younger than 2 years of age, and inpatient populations tend to be younger and to experience greater disease severity. For RSV bronchiolitis lengths of stay in European hospitals range from a low of 4 days to a high of 10 days.The Infeccion Respiratoria Infantil por Virus Respiratorio Sincitial Study Group in Spain conducted 2 prospective observational studies in 14 and 26 neonatal units, respectively, on nonprophylaxed neonates to determine hospitalization rates for respiratory syncytial viral illness during 2 consecutive RSV seasons. Throughout each respiratory season the study group followed premature infants of < or =32 weeks gestational age at birth, representing an annual birth cohort of approximately 100 000 infants. A total of 584 infants who were < or =32 weeks gestational age in the first season and 999 in the second season were followed at monthly intervals. The nonprophylaxed hospitalized group was compared with the nonprophylaxed, nonhospitalized group, and presumptive risk factors were determined for rehospitalization among premature infants. These independent variables, similar for both years, were identified as low gestational age, underlying chronic lung disease, living with school age siblings, exposure to tobacco smoke and a chronologic age of < 3 months at the onset of the RSV season.Stable, yet high rates of admission for RSV illness in Spain were observed in this premature group of < or =32 weeks gestational age: 13.4% for 1999; and 13.1% for the year 2000. Of those hospitalized during the 2 years of the study, 18 and 25%, respectively, were admitted to the intensive care unit. With the exception of higher rates of family allergy, multiple deliveries and a lower rate of neonatal morbidity, prognostic variables for high risk of hospital admission in the year 2000 compared with those of the 1999 sample. Findings from this comprehensive, prospective study served as the basis for the development of standards for the prevention of respiratory syncytial virus infection by the Spanish Society of Neonatology.

Abstract Among measles unvaccinated infants in Guinea-Bissau, we tested whether case infants with acute lower respiratory tract infection (ALRI), especially ALRI caused by respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), were more likely to be Bacille Calmette Guérin (BCG)-unvaccinated and to have no scar after BCG vaccination than were control infants without symptoms of ALRI. Three hundred and eighty-six case infants with ALRI were identified at a paediatric clinic (N = 84), a health centre (N = 82), and in a community morbidity surveillance system (N = 220). Control infants were matched on sex, age, and district and were also measles unvaccinated. In ALRI case infants, the adjusted OR of being BCG unvaccinated was 2.87 (1.31–6.32), 1.72 (0.48–6.19) in boys and 4.45 (1.48–13.4) in girls. Among BCG vaccinated ALRI case infants, the adjusted OR of having no BCG scar was 1.54 (0.86–2.75), 0.93 (0.45–1.91) in boys and 2.70 (1.21–6.02) in girls. In ALRI case infants with RSV infection, similar trends were observed. BCG vaccination may have a non-targeted protective effect against ALRI, the effect being most marked in girls. Keywords: Acute lower respiratory tract infection (ALRI); Bacille Calmette Guérin vaccine (BCG); Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV)

The research by Margaret Keith documents the pre-industrial ingestion of naturally occurring antibiotics in sufficient quantity to label bone. From this, one can examine the effects of antibiotic use in human health. The work is directly relevant to contemporary use of antibiotics in foodstuffs, as prescribed, or for animal husbandry, as well as drug-resistant strains of microorganisms. ABSTRACT Nubian bone recovered from an X-group cemetery (A.D. 350 to 550) exhibits a pattern of fluorescence identical to that of modern tetracycline-labeled bone. When it is viewed under ultraviolet light at 490 angstroms, fluorophors are visible as a characteristic yellow-green fluorescence on surfaces that were actively mineralizing at the time of exposure. Contamination of stored grains provided the proper environment for cultivation of tetracycline-producing Streptomycetes. Evidence for exposure to antibiotics in an archeological population is relevant to studies of the evolution of R factors and to the interpretation of health and disease within the population.