Abstract
Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a debilitating condition that arises in the aftermath of a highly traumatic event and was initially described as “shell shock” in combatants (1). Patients display three primary sets of symptoms: repeated flashbacks of the trauma, hyperarousal, and hyperanxiety (2). The condition was subsequently documented to occur in victims of sexual violence and natural disasters, among others (3). Further, there is extensive evidence that certain individuals have a higher predisposition to developing the condition (4), and there is also a higher prevalence of PTSD in women (5). In PNAS, Daskalakis et al. (6) explore the question of individual and sex differences using a combination of behavioral analyses and high-throughput genomics in two brain areas involved in the pathophysiology of PTSD: the hippocampus and amygdala. The authors report that glucocorticoid receptor (GR) signaling is a convergent signaling pathway associated with individual differences in both sexes. Indeed, corticosteroid treatment after trauma exposure is shown to prevent the onset of PTSD-like symptoms. They also find a similar genomic profile for individual and sex variation in blood samples, highlighting the value of blood-based biomarkers as a diagnostic tool for changes in brain signaling.
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