Heat Acclimation: Gold Mines and Genes

Overview

Journal Temperature (Austin)

Date 2017 Jan 17

PMID 28090556

Citations 12

Authors

Suzanne M Schneider

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

The underground gold mines of South Africa offer a unique historical setting to study heat acclimation. The early heat stress research was conducted and described by a young medical officer, Dr. Aldo Dreosti. He developed practical and specific protocols to first assess the heat tolerance of thousands of new mining recruits, and then used the screening results as the basis for assigning a heat acclimation protocol. The mines provide an interesting paradigm where the prevention of heat stroke evolved from genetic selection, where only Black natives were recruited due to a false assumption of their intrinsic tolerance to heat, to our current appreciation of the epigenetic and other molecular adaptations that occur with exposure to heat.

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