Higher oxygen content and transport characterize high-altitude ethnic Tibetan women with the highest lifetime reproductive success

Abstract

We chose the “natural laboratory” provided by high-altitude native ethnic Tibetan women who had completed childbearing to examine the hypothesis that multiple oxygen delivery traits were associated with lifetime reproductive success and had genomic associations. Four hundred seventeen (417) women aged 46 to 86 y residing at ≥3,500 m in Upper Mustang, Nepal, provided information on reproductive histories, sociocultural factors, physiological measurements, and DNA samples for this observational cohort study. Simultaneously assessing multiple traits identified combinations associated with lifetime reproductive success measured as the number of livebirths. Women with the most livebirths had distinctive hematological and cardiovascular traits. A hemoglobin concentration near the sample mode and a high percent of oxygen saturation of hemoglobin raised arterial oxygen concentration without risking elevated blood viscosity. We propose ongoing stabilizing selection on hemoglobin concentration because extreme values predicted fewer livebirths and directional selection favoring higher oxygen saturation because higher values had more predicted livebirths. EPAS1, an oxygen homeostasis locus with strong signals of positive natural selection and a high frequency of variants occurring only among populations indigenous to the Tibetan Plateau, associated with hemoglobin concentration. High blood flow into the lungs, wide left ventricles, and low hypoxic heart rate responses aided effective convective oxygen transport to tissues. Women with physiologies closer to unstressed, low altitude values had the highest lifetime reproductive success. This example of ethnic Tibetan women residing at high altitudes in Nepal links reproductive fitness with trait combinations increasing oxygen delivery under severe hypoxic stress and demonstrates ongoing natural selection.