[Anthroponutriciology: the development of the ideas of the founders of a new scientific direction].

The most outstanding Russian anatomists and anthropologists D.A. Zhdanov and B.A. Nikityuk and the leading nutritionist A.A. Pokrovsky were the founders of the Anthroponutritiology, which arose at the junction of Anthropological Anatomy and Nutrition Science and represented a new stage in the integration of these two sciences. Both Sciences, enriching each other with facts, existing methodology and established traditions, implementing modern innovative approaches, bring the physical and nutritional status of individuals closer to the standard (the "gold standard"). One of the applied tasks of Anthroponutritiology is the identification of the constitutional dependence of morphophysiological characters and determination of anthropological and clinical associations. Solving problems of Anthroponutritiology is a primary public concern, the most crucial state task. This issue is under the mandate of Federal Research Centre of Nutrition and Biotechnology and biotechnology, which implements this new branch of Science.

Science and Serendipity: Finding Coca-Cola in China.

Four years of wide-ranging anthropological research yielded a surprising discovery: the Coca-Cola Company, working through an industry-funded scientific nonprofit, had quietly reshaped China's obesity science and policy to align with Coke's position that exercise, not food and drink, is what matters-a view few experts accept. Hoping to get the results to the key audiences, the author submitted a capstone article to a series of high-impact medical journals that was repeatedly rejected. Eventually the article was published in a top journal, but not as "scientific research." This prompted reflection on the differences between the methods of anthropology and medical science. Anthropological research is distinguished by methodological openness, serendipity, narrative sense-making, and personalism. It is personalistic in that the body is a research tool, and a solo researcher at the center acts as data clearinghouse and marshals regional expertise to show how things make cultural sense. Using the Coke-in-China research, this article illustrates how this systematic yet self-consciously subjective approach was effective in breaching the walls of industry science and uncovering the social ties and institutional mechanisms that allowed corporate schemes to remain hidden while gaining such power. The author encourages readers in medicine and public health to think about the complex, human process by which they reach their own conclusions. A better understanding of how each science is human in its own way might open up space for greater dialogue and even more collaborative knowledge-making at the crossroads of anthropology and the health sciences.

Utilization of Standardized Mental Health Assessments in Anthropological Research: Possibilities and Pitfalls.

In the past decade anthropologists working the boundary of culture, medicine, and psychiatry have drawn from ethnographic and epidemiological methods to interdigitate data and provide more depth in understanding critical health problems. But rarely do these studies incorporate psychiatric inventories with ethnographic analysis. This article shows how triangulation of research methods strengthens scholars' ability (1) to draw conclusions from smaller data sets and facilitate comparisons of what suffering means across contexts; (2) to unpack the complexities of ethnographic and narrative data by way of interdigitating narratives with standardized evaluations of psychological distress; and (3) to enhance the translatability of narrative data to interventionists and to make anthropological research more accessible to policymakers. The crux of this argument is based on two discrete case studies, one community sample of Nicaraguan grandmothers in urban Nicaragua, and another clinic-based study of Mexican immigrant women in urban United States, which represent different populations, methodologies, and instruments. Yet, both authors critically examine narrative data and then use the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale to further unpack meaning of psychological suffering by analyzing symptomatology. Such integrative methodologies illustrate how incorporating results from standardized mental health assessments can corroborate meaning-making in anthropology while advancing anthropological contributions to mental health treatment and policy.

[COMPUTED TOMOGRAPHIC EXAMINATION OF CRANIAL LESIONS, A PALEORADIOLOGICAL APPROACH]. / KOPONYACSONT-LAESIÓK KOMPUTERTOMOGRÁFIÁS VIZSGÁLATA ÉS PALEORADIOLÓGIAI ASPEKTUSAI.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Introducing the multidisciplinary paleoradiology research at the Institute of Diagnostic Imaging and Radiation Oncology of the Kaposvár University, highlighting the cases with potential central nervous system involvement--from the scanning methods to the 3D printing--in order to draw attention to the historical background and clinical aspects of certain pathological conditions. METHODS: The authors developed the examination protocols for three different CT scanners. Among the examined archaeological remains cranial lesions were identified in 26 cases, from which 4 cases with potential central nervous system involvement are demonstrated. The scanning parameters and the advantages of secondary image reconstructions (multiplanar reconstruction, maximum intensity projection, three-dimensional volume rendering technique) are presented with the cases. RESULTS: The authors demonstrate a case with destructive skull lesions due to syphilis from the 15th century AD, a condition rarely seen or even unknown nowadays in the modern world. With the CT images of the skull base fracture from the Iron Age, signs of healing could be verified. Using the CT images a non-invasive approach is presented in the case of the craniofacial osteosarcoma in order to visualize the local status and the direct intracranial propagation. Advantages of the 3D VRT reconstructions are shown in the case of unilateral coronal suture synostosis. CONCLUSION: Paleoradiological CT examinations serve as a non-invasive, non-destructive tool for studying archaeological remains and artifacts. The special applications provided by the imaging modality contribute to the conventional paleopathological investigations.

Barriers to implementing the DSM-5 cultural formulation interview: a qualitative study.

The Outline for Cultural Formulation (OCF) in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition (DSM-IV) marked an attempt to apply anthropological concepts within psychiatry. The OCF has been criticized for not providing guidelines to clinicians. The DSM-5 Cultural Issues Subgroup has since converted the OCF into the Cultural Formulation Interview (CFI) for use by any clinician with any patient in any clinical setting. This paper presents perceived barriers to CFI implementation in clinical practice reported by patients (n = 32) and clinicians (n = 7) at the New York site within the DSM-5 international field trial. We used an implementation fidelity paradigm to code debriefing interviews after each CFI session through deductive content analysis. The most frequent patient threats were lack of differentiation from other treatments, lack of buy-in, ambiguity of design, over-standardization of the CFI, and severity of illness. The most frequent clinician threats were lack of conceptual relevance between intervention and problem, drift from the format, repetition, severity of patient illness, and lack of clinician buy-in. The Subgroup has revised the CFI based on these barriers for final publication in DSM-5. Our findings expand knowledge on the cultural formulation by reporting the CFI's reception among patients and clinicians.

The cultural construction of mental illness in prison: a perfect storm of pathology.

Large numbers of individuals in U.S. prisons meet DSM criteria for severe psychiatric disorder. These individuals also have co-occurring personality and substance abuse disorders, medical conditions, and histories of exposure to social pathologies. Based on nine months of ethnographic fieldwork in a U.S. prison, focusing on staff narratives, I utilize interpretivist and constructivist perspectives to analyze how mental health clinicians construct psychiatric disorder among inmates. Discrete categorization of disorders may be confounded by the clinical co-morbidities of inmates and the prison context. Incarcerated individuals' responses to the institutional context substantially inform mental health staffs' illness construction and the prison itself is identified as an etiological agent for disordered behaviors. In addition, diagnostic processes are found to be indeterminate, contested, and shaped by interactions with staff. Analysis of illness construction reveals that what is at stake for clinicians is not only provision of appropriate treatment, but also mandates for the safety and security of the institution. Enmeshed in these mandates, prison mental health becomes a particular local form of psychiatric knowledge. This paper contributes to anthropological approaches to mental disorder by demonstrating how local contexts mediate psychiatric knowledge and contribute to the limited ethnographic record of prisons.

Making sense of HIV in southeastern Nigeria: fictional narratives, cultural meanings, and methodologies in medical anthropology.

Fictional narratives have rarely been used in medical anthropological research. This article illustrates the value of such narratives by examining how young people in southeastern Nigeria navigate the cultural resources available to them to make sense of HIV in their creative writing. Using thematic data analysis and narrative-based methodologies, it analyzes a sample (N = 120) from 1,849 narratives submitted by Nigerian youth to the 2005 Scenarios from Africa scriptwriting contest on the theme of HIV. The narratives are characterized by five salient themes: tragedy arising from the incompatibility of sex outside marriage and kinship obligations; female vulnerability and blame; peer pressure and moral ambivalence; conservative Christian sexual morality; and the social and family consequences of HIV. We consider the strengths and limitations of this narrative approach from a theoretical perspective and by juxtaposing our findings with those generated by Daniel Jordan Smith using standard ethnographic research methods with a similar Igbo youth population.

Biomedical psychiatry and its concealed metaphors: an anthropological perspective.

The idea that power relations structure social life is self-evident to most anthropologists. Western medical knowledge or biomedicine, and by extension science or scientific knowledge, however, has until relatively recently been exempt from anthropological scrutiny in political terms. An understanding of biomedicine as a system of knowledge that is not a copy of facts but a representation of them has entailed a break with the traditional separation of folk knowledge and scientific knowledge in anthropology, making it possible to include biomedicine in the repertoire of ethnographic objects. The peculiarity of biomedicine as a cultural system, seen from this perspective, lies in a paradox: its self-characterization as a set of non-ideological discourses and practices is a representation that conceals its ideological and power-saturated nature. Through an analysis of DSM-IV-TR, this article explores some of the representational strategies through which this concealment takes place in biomedical psychiatry: the asocial and universal character of mental illness categories; the neutrality of clinical practice; and the non-moral nature of clinical criteria and judgment. These are concealed metaphors in the true sense, for not only do they speak of something without naming it but they also deny their own existence as metaphors.

The science behind pre-Columbian evidence of syphilis in Europe: research by documentary.

This article discusses the presentation of scientific findings by documentary, without the process of peer review. We use, as an example, PBS's "The Syphilis Enigma," in which researchers presented novel evidence concerning the origin of syphilis that had never been reviewed by other scientists. These "findings" then entered the world of peer-reviewed literature through citations of the documentary itself or material associated with it. Here, we demonstrate that the case for pre-Columbian syphilis in Europe that was made in the documentary does not withstand scientific scrutiny. We also situate this example from paleopathology within a larger trend of "science by documentary" or "science by press conference," in which researchers seek to bypass the peer review process by presenting unvetted findings directly to the public.

Beyond the Linguistic/Medical Anthropology Divide: Retooling Anthropology to Face COVID-19.

Differing analytics and ethnographic practices impede conversations between linguistic and medical anthropologists. Here I juxtapose articles in this special issue that use diverse ethnographic sites to rethink anthropological concepts of health, disease, care, the body, language, and communication in the light of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. I track how anthropologists and their interlocutors envision relations between ideologies, embedded modeling (or metacommunication), and ordinary pragmatics, particularly by projecting their actual or ideal consonance versus exploring how sounds, bodies, technologies, and practices emerge from disjunctures. Comparing H1N1 in 2009 and COVID-19 prompts reflection on why anthropologists must transcend this foundational divide to tackle pandemic complexities.

Medical Anthropology in Pediatrics: Improving Disparities by Partnering with Families.

Cultural health beliefs and practices often affect accuracy of diagnoses, health care delivery, and treatment plan adherence, which can lead to health disparity. However, the effect of these belief systems, and acceptance of health care provider recommendations is not commonly discussed. As the proportion of patients from a variety of ethnic and cultural backgrounds increases, an awareness of these belief systems can help achieve better health outcomes. A provider who is flexible and can understand and possibly integrate traditionally non-Western approaches into their treatment plans may build a stronger bond of trust with their patient, thus building a bridge to better health and well-being. [Pediatr Ann. 2020;49(5):e222-e227.].

An introduction to the role of immunology in medical anthropology and molecular epidemiology.

Medical anthropology is a multi-disciplinary approach to the medical sciences and humanities. Immunology is of the basic medical sciences dealing with anthropology as a science which involves in recognition of self and non-self. We performed this review paper to introduce the role of immunology in medical anthropology and molecular epidemiology. This narrative review was based on the authors' original experience and current literature. We discussed about human leukocyte antigens (HLA) and killer-cell immunoglobulin-like receptors (KIR) and their disease associations. Bioinformatics and biostatistics help us to use this topic in evidence-based medicine. Immunogenetics is an important part of the molecular anthropology being a part of medical anthropology in turn. There were different notions of the integration of immunology and medical anthropology including environmental, ecological and cultural effects, historical and philosophical approaches, immunological biomarkers in different patients, and immunogenetics. Such studies can be used in pharmacogenomics and personalized medicine especially for immunotherapy.

[Medical anthropology in Latin America, 1990-2015: A strictly provisional review]. / Antropología médica en América Latina 1990-2015: Una revisión estrictamente provisional.

The article presents a provisional examination of the production of Latin American medical anthropology, especially from Mexico, and to a lesser degree Brazil, from 1990 to 2015, in an attempt to highlight the discipline's principal contributions, orientations and objectives, but also to pose critiques and doubts, especially with respect to the omission of the study of serious collective health problems and processes. The article attempts to put into evidence the importance of the discipline not only for anthropology, but also for biomedicine, suggesting the need for complementation beyond the differences and incompatibilities that exist regarding, for example, the use of qualitative techniques, and interventions -or lack of interventions- regarding the customs of the different social actors with respect to health/disease/care-prevention processes.

Se presenta una aproximación provisional sobre lo producido por la antropología médica en América Latina, especialmente, en México y, en menor medida, en Brasil, entre 1990 y 2015, tratando de señalar sus principales aportes, orientaciones y objetivos, pero también planteando críticas y algunas dudas referidas, especialmente, a la omisión del estudio de graves procesos y problemas de salud colectiva. En el artículo se trata de poner en evidencia la importancia de esta disciplina no solo para la antropología, sino también para la biomedicina, planteando la necesidad de complementación, más allá de las diferencias e incompatibilidades que existen respecto, por ejemplo, del uso de las técnicas cualitativas o de las intervenciones y no intervenciones sobre los "usos y costumbres" de los diferentes actores sociales referidos a los procesos de salud/enfermedad/atención-prevención.

Researchers' Perceived Challenges in Studying Chronic Kidney Disease of Nontraditional Etiology in Mesoamerica.

INTRODUCTION Despite growing research interest in the epidemic of chronic kidney disease of nontraditional etiology (a distinct form of chronic kidney disease disproportionately affecting agricultural populations across Mesoamerica-Central America and southern Mexico), its etiology remains poorly understood. OBJECTIVE Elucidate factors that impact researchers' efforts to understand the epidemic of chronic kidney disease of nontraditional etiology. METHODS Semistructured interviews were conducted with 39 international researchers, selected based on their publications and participation in conferences about chronic kidney disease of nontraditional etiology. Interviews were conducted from May through September of 2015 in English or Spanish by video conference, telephone or in person. Interviews were audio recorded, transcribed, and analyzed iteratively using content analysis. RESULTS Of 39 researchers interviewed, 30.8% were women, 84.6% had a medical and/or doctoral degree and 74.3% had ≥6 years' experience carrying out research on chronic kidney disease of nontraditional etiology. Three major themes were identified related to factors affecting research progress. The first, influence of state and private interests, concerned perceptions that sugar industry and some governments in Mesoamerica dismissed, hindered, intimidated and inaccurately represented research on chronic kidney disease of nontraditional etiology. The second, limited material and human resources, had to do with scarcity of stable, impartial funding and adequate in-country research infrastructure. Researchers were largely funded by nontraditional sources (charitable organizations, private donations, sugar industry in Mesoamerica, personal funds) or not funded at all. The third, logistical challenges across study lifetimes, referred to barriers such as unwieldy approval mechanisms, gang interference and publication hurdles. CONCLUSIONS Producing high quality and clinically relevant studies to address chronic kidney disease of nontraditional etiology in the resource-scarce Mesoamerican research climate has been fraught with challenges. These findings contextualize the progress that has been made in understanding chronic kidney disease of nontraditional etiology to date and highlight the need for public health and biomedical organizations to support researchers' ongoing efforts to engage all stakeholders in addressing the epidemic, disseminate their research findings and identify feasible strategies for addressing the community-wide suffering caused by chronic kidney disease of nontraditional etiology. KEYWORDS Chronic kidney disease, chronic renal insufficiency, chronic renal failure, chronic kidney failure, interstitial nephritis, qualitative research, epidemiology, occupational health, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Mesoamerica, Nicaragua.

Visualizing Tensions in an Ethnographic Moment: Images and Intersubjectivity.

Images function as sources of data and influence our thinking about fieldwork, representation, and intersubjectivity. In this article, I show how both the ethnographic relationships and the working method of photography lead to a more nuanced understanding of a healing event. I systematically analyze 33 photographs made over a 15-minute period during the preparation and application of a poultice (topical cure) in a rural Andean home. The images chronicle the event, revealing my initial reaction and the decisions I made when tripping the shutter. By unpacking the relationship between ethnographer and subject, I reveal the constant negotiation of positions, assumptions, and expectations that make up intersubjectivity. For transparency, I provide thumbnails of all images, including metadata, so that readers may consider alternative interpretations of the images and event.

[On ethnographic positions in the anthropology of health in South America]. / Sobre las posiciones etnográficas en la antropología de la salud en el sur de las Américas.

Ethnographies on health issues in populations that live in conditions of poverty, inequality and segregation have proliferated over the last decades in South America. The aim of this article is to problematize - preliminarily - certain patterns in the positions and relations of ethnographers with respect to study subjects and populations during their fieldwork and in the writing of study results. This paper examines the relationships between these ethnographic positions and the dominant theoretical perspectives in the region. In addition, this article explores briefly the resolution power as well as the sensibilities, theoretical maps, and meanings of such positions in light of power logics, symbolic economies, and diverse manners of accumulation by dispossession in this geographical area.

Las etnografías sobre problemas de salud en poblaciones que viven bajo condiciones de desigualdad, pobreza y segregación han proliferado en Sudamérica durante las últimas décadas. El objetivo de este trabajo consiste en problematizar, de forma preliminar, ciertos patrones en las relaciones y posiciones de los etnógrafos respecto de los sujetos y de las poblaciones, tanto en el trabajo de campo como en la escritura de los resultados. Analizando dichas posiciones, este artículo examina su relación con las orientaciones teóricas dominantes en la región. Además, explora, brevemente, los poderes de resolución, las sensibilidades, los mapas teóricos y de los sentidos de algunas posiciones a la luz de los desafíos de las lógicas de poder, las economías simbólicas y las diversas variantes de acumulación por desposesión dominantes en esta geográfica.