Anthropologist's aging research earns dissertation award
An anthropologist who studied the effect of aging on the blood sugar levels of rural Maya women has won the University's Outstanding Dissertation award.
Penelope A. McLorg, 41, will receive a $1,000 cash prize during commencement ceremonies May 12 for work showing that the older women she studied could process glucose effectively -- a finding that contradicts previous assumptions about age and glucose regulation and one that has implications for researchers who study diseases such as diabetes.
Amy D. Broemmel, a doctoral graduate in curriculum and instruction who investigated teacher perspectives on preservice reading education, and Timothy T. Loftus, a doctoral graduate in geography who looked at expected land-use patterns in the Cache River watershed, were finalists. Longtime professors Richard E. and Donna T. Falvo sponsor the annual dissertation competition.
McLorg's study of aging and glycemia focused on 60 women, ranging in age from 40 to 85, who lived in 16 villages in Mexico's Yucatan peninsula. After gathering information on the women's physical characteristics, diet and activity levels, McLorg obtained and analyzed samples of their blood. She found that the older women did not have higher blood sugar levels. Moreover, a comparison of their personal information with similar data on women from industrialized nations suggested that lifestyle plays more of a role in the ability to regulate blood sugar than age does.
Douglas E. Crews, an Ohio State University anthropologist who serves on the editorial boards of several of the field's leading journals, said these findings will have a major influence on future debates about the role of glucose in the biology of aging.
"Dr. McLorg's work is on a par with that of the first researchers to complete cross-cultural studies of blood pressure variation showing that the increase of blood pressure with age, so common in our own population, does not generally occur among members of more traditional living societies," he wrote in a letter supporting McLorg's nomination for the dissertation prize.
Cynthia M. Beall, S. Idell Pyle professor of anthropology at Case Western Reserve University, said in her supporting letter that the study's findings were "particularly interesting."
"This is a sample of heavy women (with an average weight of 125 pounds for women 4 feet, 8 inches tall) who might therefore be expected to exhibit poor glucose regulation and who come from a population known for disorders of glucose regulation," Beall wrote.
SIUC anthropologist Susan M. Ford said that by focusing both on women and on a Third World culture, McLorg bridged several longstanding gaps in scientific knowledge about differences in the way humans process blood sugar. Ford found McLorg's results especially significant when compared with other studies of westernized Native Americans where researchers did see a correlation between aging and impaired glucose metabolism.
"The best research raises more questions and leads us in new directions," Ford wrote. "(Because) there are significant differences with Native American populations, the next step is to discern the role of culture from that of genetics."
McLorg received her doctoral degree last May and is now an adjunct assistant professor of anthropology at SIUC. She earned her bachelor's degree from the University of Kentucky in 1984 and her master's from SIUC in 1991.
Broemmel, now an assistant professor at Eastern Illinois University, will be an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin's LaCrosse campus in August. She earned her bachelor's at EIU in 1992 and her master's at SIUC in 1993.
Loftus, now working on a watershed project as a post-doctoral fellow in SIUC's geography department, is a three-degree graduate of SIUC, earning his bachelor's in 1979 and his master's in 1994.
- K.C. Jaehnig
May 2, 2001