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March 20th, 2008
Have you ever noticed how some people respond better to stress than others? Well, it turns out, that like everything else there may be a genetic component. According to a new study in the March 19 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, adults who experienced child abuse and have variations of a gene related to stress response appear to be at greater risk of suffering from a debilitating psychiatric condition, post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as adults.
Approximately 8% of the United States population experiences post traumatic stress disorder. Rates among combat veterans and residents of violent areas are higher. But because not everyone who is exposed to stress develops the disorder, Rebekah Bradley and her colleagues at the Emory University School of Medicine decided to study the variations in one of the genes, FKBP5, involved in the human stress response. Study participants were highly traumatized, low-income men and women living in an urban area.
The researchers found that genetic variations did not directly predict who developed PTSD symptoms nor did genetic variation interact with level of non-child abuse trauma to predict PTSD symptom severity. However, the researchers did discover that variation in placement of the gene on the chromosome did interact with the severity of child abuse to predict level of adult PTSD symptoms.
This gene-environment interaction say the authors, "...potentially serve as predictors of both risk and resilience for adult PTSD among survivors of child physical and sexual abuse."
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