PKU Disease

Phenylketonuria is a disorder that affects the ability to metabolize the protein phenylalanine. The phenylalanine builds up within the body and interferes with brain development which can cause serious retardation especially if not treated as quickly as possible after birth. This disorder is not very common and a family physician may never see a case in a newborn infant and could forget to check for the disease so now it has become a part of testing of every child born in a medical facility. Children born in developing third world countries however may not be tested for the disease and are significantly more likely to die or be mentally retarded. The test for the disease involves a simple blood or urine test. Testing should be done shortly after birth when the baby has started more metabolic processing.

When I was an Anthropology student at the University of South Florida I was concentrating on African Culture and had a world class professor "Dr. Waterman" who specialized in African culture and ethnomusicology. Later when I was taking other classes on physical Anthropology I did some research on PKU disease and how the diet of the child had to severely restrict the intake of protein. I had previously discovered that in African cultures, the intake of protein in any family group first went to the adult male because he would need to be strong and healthy and work a long hard day. Next in turn was the adult female, the mother who also needed a lot of energy throughout the day. In fact the intake of protein was distributed directly proportional to the age of the members of the family and their ability to work through the day. The youngest children were only given meats and other proteins last or were only given the broth of soups etc. Very young children were fed breast milk sometimes to the age of 4 or 5 which would seem odd in our culture. Although this intake of breast milk is a protein source it did contain other substances to keep the child healthy in a very poor overall diet.

My thought was that in a manner of speaking young children that had PKU disease in such a culture may have their diet artificially protein restricted by the very culture and in effect were being partially treated for the disease. Because the number of PKU diseased children was not well documented in third world countries it was impossible to get clear data on the hypothesis directly, but a look at the diet of such cultures in general would show a low protein intake for most of the population in general.

There was a professor at the University of South Florida Medical College that was a specialist in PKU disease and I did go and interview him about the disease and my hypothesis. He had no additional data that may shed light on the hypothesis and only added to my general knowledge of the disease. I was also interested in why such a disease should even be a possibility from a genetic point of view. Typically a trait could have some advantage to the population under certain conditions. It might be that a genetic trait the causes retardation from the inability to metabolize protein could have some advantage when a population would experience a long period of time without the ability to find and take in protein. For example: the sickle cell disease can partially protect those with the disease from malaria.

Perhaps a future anthropologist will revisit this area of study.