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A glance at “PPTR 2014” – the 5th International Symposium on the Physiology and Pharmacology of Temperature Regulation

Tanya Swanepoel,A. Haw

Published 2015 in Temperature

ABSTRACT

The International Symposium on the Physiology and Pharmacology of Temperature Regulation (PPTR) was held, for the first time in Africa, in September 2014 when 163 delegates (including 41 students) from 30 countries met in the Skukuza Rest Camp of the Kruger National Park, South Africa (see Fig. 1). Andrea Fuller chaired the Local Organizing Committee; its members were drawn from the Brain Function Research Group in the School of Physiology at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (http://www.wits.ac.za/bfrg/ 9015/bfrg.html). The Symposium hosted 11 invited speakers, comprising both established and early-career researchers, 12 symposia, a workshop, and a debate, as well as free oral communications and posters. The biennial PPTR symposia coalesced from satellite symposia of the International Union of Physiological Sciences (IUPS) and the International Union of Basic and Clinical Pharmacology, devoted separately to thermal physiology and thermal (mainly fever) pharmacology. Comparative physiologists, including the late Knut Schmidt-Nielsen and C. Richard Taylor, contributed fully to early thermal satellite symposia of the IUPS, but recent PPTR Symposia have drifted toward human and medically-oriented thermal physiology. Aggressive marketing to comparative thermal physiologists restored the balance at PPTR 2014. For example, discussions of torpor and hibernation were prominent; they have been absent from PPTR meetings for many years. Symbolically, both the opening and closing plenary speakers addressed comparative themes. Brian Barnes, Professor of Zoophysiology in the Department of Biology and Wildlife, Director of the Institute of Arctic Biology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, opened the conference with a lecture emphasizing the importance of long-term studies of body temperature regulation in free-living animals. Camille Parmesan, Professor of Integrative Biology at the University of Texas at Austin, United States of America, and National Marine Aquarium Chair in the Public Understanding of Oceans and Human Health at Plymouth University, United Kingdom, closed the meeting by discussing biological responses to climate change, including examples from butterfly range changes. The restoration of comparative thermal physiology was not at the expense of human physiology (for example there was a symposium on exercise and hydration), nor of fundamental mechanisms (e.g., there was a symposium on neural control of temperature regulation). Medically-oriented thermal physiology still featured strongly too, and, indeed, recapitulated its historic links with thermal pharmacology. Three experts debated whether fever is “friend or foe,” discussing the survival value of fever, the appropriateness of antipyretic therapy in pregnancy and infancy, the disputed benefit of paracetamol (acetaminophen) use in critically-ill patients, and the consequences of a friend or foe decision for the pharmaceutical industry. Also, sponsorship from a pharmaceutical company allowed a powerful international group of menopause experts (Fig. 2) to present the state of their art on the topic of the origin and consequences of menopausal hot flushes to an audience of thermal

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