NAIPI

Each year, more than five million Americans suffer with post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. Following terrible experiences — like rape, combat or disaster — PTSD can result in flashbacks, panic attacks and many other symptoms.

But many trauma victims don’t develop PTSD and doctors don’t have a biological test that they can rely on to diagnose who has the disorder — or to predict who is likely to get it.

Now, a team of researchers from the Emory University School of Medicine and the University of Vermont (UVM) have found that, in women, abnormal blood levels of a hormone called PACAP, produced in response to stress, are strongly linked to post-traumatic stress disorder.

Their study holds promise for developing blood and genetic tests that can identify those who have PTSD — “and this starts to give us tools to predict whether a patient is going to be susceptible to PTSD,” says the University of Vermont’s Victor May, a professor in the Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology, who helped lead the study.

The work might also eventually aid in developing treatments for the disorder and other anxiety diseases.The results were published in the February 24 issue of the journal Nature.

The UVM investigators’ work on this study was supported in part with funding from the National Institutes of Health and UVM Neuroscience COBRE from the National Center for Research Resources.

Joshua E. Brown
Joshua.E.Brown@uvm.edu
802/656-3039