Adults with post-traumatic stress disorder and a history of childhood trauma had significantly shorter telomere length than those with PTSD but without childhood trauma, in a study by researchers at the San Francisco VA Medical Center and the University of California, San Francisco.
Telomeres are DNA-protein complexes that cap the ends of chromosomes and protect them from damage and mutations. Short telomere length is associated with an increased risk of cancer, cardiovascular disease, and autoimmune and neurodegenerative diseases, as well as early death.
For the study, published in the online Articles in Press section of
Biological Psychiatry, the authors collected DNA samples from 43 adults with PTSD and 47 matched participants without PTSD. Initial analysis showed that on average, the subjects with PTSD had shorter telomere length than those without.
"This was striking to us, because the subjects were relatively young, with an average age of 30, and in good physical health," said lead author Aoife O'Donovan, PhD, a researcher in psychiatry at SFVAMC and UCSF. "Telomere length was significantly shorter than we might expect in such a group."
The authors then looked at incidence of severe childhood trauma, including neglect, family violence, physical abuse, and sexual abuse. They found that, among the subjects with PTSD, the more childhood trauma a subject had experienced, the higher the risk of shorter telomere length. "People who had multiple categories of childhood traumas had the shortest telomere length," said O'Donovan.
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