
Melissa A. LiebertNorthern Arizona University | NAU · Department of Anthropology
Melissa A. Liebert
Ph.D. University of Oregon; M.S. University of Oregon; B.A. Northwestern University
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108
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Introduction
Skills and Expertise
Publications
Publications (108)
Introduction
This study tests the hypothesis that self‐reported somatic symptoms are associated with biomarkers of stress, including elevated blood pressure and suppressed immune function, among Shuar adults living in the Ecuadorian Amazon.
Methods
Research was conducted in three Shuar communities in the Upano Valley of the Ecuadorian Amazon and i...
Background:
Aquí Entre Nos (Between Us) is a community-based participatory research project to engage rural, ethno-racially diverse hotel housekeepers in a right to work state during a time of national anti-immigrant policy, wildfires and emergence of a global pandemic.
Objectives:
We aimed to (1) build trust and social support with the hotel ho...
Objectives
The hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis and its primary end product, the glucocorticoid cortisol, are major components of the evolved human stress response. However, most studies have examined these systems among populations in high‐income settings, which differ from the high pathogen and limited resource contexts in which the HPA...
To address claims of human exceptionalism, we determine where humans fit within the greater mammalian distribution of reproductive inequality. We show that humans exhibit lower reproductive skew (i.e., inequality in the number of surviving offspring) among males and smaller sex differences in reproductive skew than most other mammals, while neverth...
Purpose: Homeless opioid treatment clients who transition into housing generally demonstrate better outcomes, but housing environments vary widely and may not benefit racial/ethnic minority populations equally. We sought to identify how race/ethnicity moderates the association between positive opioid treatment response and moving into dependent or...
Objective
Cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection is associated with age-related chronic disease, and co-infection with Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) may compound disease risk. We aimed to assess the frequency of CMV infection and its relationship with age among EBV seropositive individuals in an Indigenous Amazonian population.
Methods
We report concentration...
The goal of assessing psychosocial stress as a process and outcome in naturalistic (i.e., field) settings is applicable across the social, biological, and health sciences. Meaningful measurement of biology-in-context is, however, far from simple or straightforward. In this brief methods review, we introduce theoretical framings, methodological conv...
Objective
Anemia is an important global health challenge. We investigate anemia prevalence among Indigenous Shuar of Ecuador to expand our understanding of population‐level variation, and to test hypotheses about how anemia variation is related to age, sex, and market integration.
Methods
Hemoglobin levels were measured in a total sample of 1650 S...
Significance
Disgust likely evolved to regulate exposure to pathogen-related stimuli and behaviors. One key prediction, that individuals with greater pathogen disgust sensitivity (PDS) will be exposed to fewer pathogens and thus suffer fewer infections, has never been tested directly. To function adaptively, PDS must respond to the local cost/benef...
Background
Childhood overweight and obesity (OW/OB) is increasingly centered in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) as rural populations experience market integration and lifeway change. Most explanatory studies have relied on imprecise estimates of children's energy expenditure, restricting understanding of the relative effects of changes in...
Background
Soil-transmitted helminth (STH) infections have many negative health outcomes (e.g., diarrhea, nutritional deficiencies) that can also exacerbate poverty. These infections are generally highest among low-income populations, many of which are also undergoing market integration (MI; increased participation in a market-based economy). Yet t...
Children’s metabolic energy expenditure is central to evolutionary and epidemiological frameworks for understanding variation in human phenotype and health. Nonetheless, the impact of a physically active lifestyle and heavy burden of infectious disease on child metabolism remains unclear. Using energetic, activity, and biomarker measures, we show t...
Objectives:
This study investigates bone density across the life course among Bolivian Tsimane and Ecuadorian Shuar of Amazonia. Both groups are rural, high-fertility forager-horticulturalists, with high lifetime physical activity levels. We test whether Tsimane and Shuar bone density patterns are different from each other, and if both groups are...
Objectives:
Little research exists documenting levels of intestinal inflammation among indigenous populations where exposure to macroparasites, like soil-transmitted helminths (STHs), is common. Reduced STH exposure is hypothesized to contribute to increased prevalence of elevated intestinal inflammation in wealthy nations, likely due to coevoluti...
Significance
The energetic impact of immune function on human growth remains unclear. Using data from Amazonian forager-horticulturalists, we show that diverse, low-level immune activity predicts reduced childhood growth over periods of competing energy use ranging from 1 wk to 20 mo. We also demonstrate that modest body fat stores (i.e., energy re...
Economic development is marked by dramatic increases in the incidence of microbiome-associated diseases, such as autoimmune diseases and metabolic syndromes, but the lifestyle changes that drive alterations in the human microbiome are not known. We measured market integration as a proxy for economically related lifestyle attributes, such as ownersh...
The hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis represents an important and evolutionarily ancient biological pathway linking physical and psychological stressors with human health. Despite considerable research exploring the physiological stress response among developed populations, few studies have examined HPA activity in non-industrialized contex...
Objective:
Our objective was to test whether food insecurity mediates cross-sectional associations between social disadvantage and body composition among older adults (aged 50+) in India (n = 6556).
Methods:
Adjusting for key sociodemographic and dietary variables, we examined whether markers of social disadvantage (lower educational attainment,...
Tapeworms are parasitic flatworms (class: Cestoidea). They differ from soil-transmitted helminths (STHs; class: Nematoda) in biology, physiology, and mode of transmission. Tapeworms are contracted through consumption of infected meat or fecally-contaminated foods, and can result in abdominal pain, diarrhea and nutritional deficiencies. Prior to 201...
In this paper, we examine patterns of self-reported diagnosis of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) and prevalences of algorithm/measured test-based, undiagnosed, and untreated NCDs in China, Ghana, India, Mexico, Russia, and South Africa. Nationally representative samples of older adults aged ≥50 years were analyzed from wave 1 of the World Health Or...
Background
Soil-transmitted helminth (STH) infection peaks during childhood and varies by sex. The impact of market integration (MI) (increasing production for and consumption from a market-based economy) on these infection patterns, however, is unclear. In this study, STH infection is examined by sex and age among indigenous Shuar inhabiting two r...
Objectives:
Perceived income adequacy is positively associated with self-rated health (SRH) and quality of life (QOL) among adults in higher-income countries. Additionally, older individuals often report higher levels of income adequacy. However, it is unclear if these associations, documented primarily in high-income countries, are also evident a...
Background:
Market integration (MI)-increasing production for and consumption from a market-based economy-is drastically altering traditional ways of life and environmental conditions among indigenous Amazonian peoples. The effects of MI on the biology and health of Amazonian children and adolescents, however, remain unclear.
Aim:
This study exa...
Cognitive decline in older adults has been linked with decreased physical performance (Buchman et al., 2007; Wang et al., 2006), likely due to neurological changes that impair mobility but precede the onset of dementia (Marquis et al., 2002). Given that compromised physical function is often associated with dementia, clarifying the relationship bet...
Perceived income satisfaction appears to be positively associated with self-rated health (SRH) and quality of life (QOL). Additionally, older individuals often report higher levels of perceived income adequacy. However, it is unclear how income adequacy is associated with age, SRH, or QOL cross-culturally.
Data were drawn from the World Health Org...
Peak expiratory flow (PEF), a measure of lung function, has emerged as a strong predictor of mortality among older adults. However, few studies have examined factors associated with PEF in economically developing countries. In the present study, we use binomial logistic regression models to investigate associations between various sociodemographic...
Objectives:
Knemometry, the precise measurement of lower leg (LL) length, suggests that childhood short-term (e.g., weekly) growth is a dynamic, nonlinear process. However, owing to the large size and complexity of the traditional knemometer device, previous study of short-term growth among children has been restricted predominantly to clinical se...
Background:
Self-reported (SR) body mass index (BMI) values are often used to determine obesity prevalence. However, individuals frequently overestimate their height and underestimate their weight, resulting in artificially lower obesity prevalence rates. These patterns are especially apparent among older adults and overweight individuals. The pre...
Objectives:
Accelerometry provides researchers with a powerful tool to measure physical activity in population-based studies, yet this technology has been underutilized in cross-cultural studies of older adults. The present study was conducted among older adults in an urban setting in India with the following three objectives: (1) to compare avera...
Background:
Physical activity impacts the ageing process; yet, few studies have examined relationships among physical activity, functional abilities and health among older adults in non-Western settings.
Aim:
This study tests for associations among measures of physical activity, function and self-report health conditions among 200 older adults (...
Self-reported (SR) body mass index (BMI) values are often used to determine obesity prevalence. However, individuals frequently overestimate their height and underestimate their weight, resulting in artificially lower obesity prevalence rates. These patterns are especially apparent among older adults and overweight individuals. The present cross-se...
Background: Chronic diseases contribute a large share of disease burden in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Chronic diseases have a tendency to occur simultaneously and where there are two or more such conditions, this is termed as ‘multimorbidity’. Multimorbidity is associated with adverse health outcomes, but limited research has been un...
This SAGE physical activity (SAGE-PA) sub-study was implemented as a face-to-face household interview in Jodhpur, Rajasthan, India in 2010. As with many self-reported health measures, a level of bias is understood to exist in reporting physical activity levels. However, it is not known how well the Global Physical Activity questions used in SAGE re...
Information concerning physical growth among small-scale populations remains limited, yet such data are critical to local health efforts and to foster basic understandings of human life history and variation in childhood development. Using a large dataset and robust modeling methods, this study aims to describe growth from birth to adulthood among...
As part of WHO's Study on global AGEing and adult health (SAGE), dried blood spots (DBS) were collected from adults in China, Ghana, India, Mexico, Russia and South Africa. Before we can measure telomere length, it is first necessary to assess if genomic DNA extracted from DBS filter paper cards is sufficient for TL assays. We sought to determine i...
Elevated blood pressure (BP) is a leading risk factor for cardiovascular disease and accounted for an estimated 12.8% of all global deaths in 2008 (WHO, 2011). The burden of hypertension-related disease is greatest among low- and middle-income countries, with the risk (mean systolic BP ≥140mmHg or mean diastolic BP ≥90mmHg) increasing with age (Law...
Individuals often overestimate their height while concomitantly underestimating their weight; this results in lower obesity prevalence rates when self-report data are used to calculate BMI, a pattern that has been observed in both sexes (Gorber et al., 2007; Nyholm et al., 2007). This misclassification of obesity due to inaccurate self-reported (SR...
Objective
Low bone density and osteoporosis prevalence, while well-documented in wealthy nations, are poorly studied in rural, non-clinical contexts in economically developing regions such as Latin America. This study contributes preliminary osteoporosis risk data for a rural Colono (mestizo) population from Amazonian Ecuador.Methods
Anthropometric...
Significance
It is a popular assumption that certain perceptions—for example, that highly feminine women are attractive, or that masculine men are aggressive—reflect evolutionary processes operating within ancestral human populations. However, observations of these perceptions have mostly come from modern, urban populations. This study presents dat...
Objectives. Changes in sleep patterns often occur in older adults. Previous studies have documented associations between sleep duration, sleep quality, and obesity risk in older individuals, yet few studies have examined these trends in lower-income countries. The present cross-sectional study uses nationally representative datasets from six countr...
Cassava beer, or chicha, is typically consumed daily by the indigenous Shuar people of the Ecuadorian Amazon. This traditional beverage made from cassava tuber (Manihot esculenta) is thought to improve nutritional quality and flavor while extending shelf life in a tropical climate. Bacteria responsible for chicha fermentation could be a source of m...
Recent research suggests that decreased physical activity in old age is detrimental to health, yet few studies have examined the relationships among physical activity, functional abilities, and health among older adults in non-Western settings. Furthermore, much of the existing research on this topic has relied on self-report activity data; however...
Background:
Alterations in sleep architecture are common among older adults. Previous studies have documented associations between sleep duration, sleep quality, and cognitive performance in older individuals, yet few studies have examined these trends using population-based samples from non-Western societies. The present cross-sectional study use...
The 2010 Global Burden of Disease Study found physical inactivity is the 10th leading risk contributor to disease-related DALYs. Self-reported physical activity, with its typical limitations with self-report, are further complicated in older age by issues with memory recall and cognition in older adults. Light and moderate intensity activities are...
Results of 7d accelerometry and GPAQ interview in a sample of adults from India.
Abstract Soil-transmitted helminth (STH) infections can result in a variety of negative health outcomes (e.g., diarrhea, nutritional deficiencies). Market integration (MI; participation in market-based economies) has been suggested to alter levels of STH exposure due to associated changes in diet, sanitation, and behavior, but the effects are compl...
http://paa2014.princeton.edu/papers/142610
Recent technological advances in accelerometry have provided researchers with a powerful tool with which to objectively measure energy expenditure and document patterns of physical activity in population-level studies. However, this technology has been underutilized in the study of physical activity patter...
http://paa2014.princeton.edu/papers/143052
Recent epidemiological studies have identified depression as an important public health issue, affecting approximately 121 million people globally (Üstün et al., 2004; WHO, 2008). In 2004, depression was ranked as the third leading cause of disease worldwide based on disability adjusted life years (DALYs)...
Data from the Study on global AGEing and adult health (SAGE), a longitudinal study of nationally-representative samples of older adults (>50 years old) in six middle income countries (China, Ghana, India, Mexico, Russia, and South Africa), was used to examine relationships among body mass index (BMI), waist circumference (WC), and depression (based...
Cassava beer, or chicha , is typically consumed daily by the indigenous Shuar people of the Ecuadorian Amazon. This traditional beverage made from cassava tuber ( Manihot esculenta ) improves nutritional quality and flavor while extending shelf life in a tropical climate. Bacteria responsible for chicha fermentation could be a source of microbes be...
Cassava beer, or chicha , is typically consumed daily by the indigenous Shuar people of the Ecuadorian Amazon. This traditional beverage made from cassava tuber ( Manihot esculenta ) improves nutritional quality and flavor while extending shelf life in a tropical climate. Bacteria responsible for chicha fermentation could be a source of microbes be...
Health outcomes are strongly related to financial situation. Financial resources can be used to improve living conditions, create health care options, and facilitate access to health promoting activities and food (Cairney, 2000; Cheng et al., 2002; Kahnerman and Deaton, 2010; Matthews and Gallo, 2011; Molarius et al., 2007). However, accurately det...
Background/Question/Methods Cassava beer, chicha, is consumed daily by indigenous Shuar populations living in the Ecuadorian Amazon. A dietary staple, fermentation of cassava tuber (Manihot escuelenta) improves nutritional quality and flavor relative to the raw plant while extending shelf life in a tropical climate. Chicha is a potential source of...
The present research, part of the World Health Organization’s Study on global AGEing and adult health (SAGE), focuses on older adults (>50 years old) in six middle income countries (China, Ghana, India, Mexico, Russian Federation, and South Africa) and uses self-report data on sleep quality (n=33,348), sleep duration (n=30,012), sleep-related probl...