ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the associations among malaria resistance, glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD) deficiency, and fava consumption in an effort to develop a biocultural model to explain the evolutionary significance of those interrelationships. Favism is characterized as an acute hemolytic anemia precipitated in G6PD deficient individuals by ingestion of fava beans and possibly by inhalation of fava pollen. In some G6PD deficients hemolytic crises occur subsequent to the administration of primaquine and related antimalarial drugs. Normal individuals would be selected against by malaria, and G6PD deficient individuals would be favored. However, the most deficient individuals would be selected against by favism. The incidence of favism is fairly high in the circum-Mediterranean countries where high frequencies of G6PD deficiency overlap with the common consumption of fava beans. The chapter aims to develop a microevolutionary model to demonstrate and clarify further the selective and counter-selective factors, both cultural and genetic, that operate in this unique example of human adaptation.
