Is there a “trauma gene”?
Well, let’s back up a bit. We know that genetics can have something to do with vulnerability to trauma.
But what if we could find a specific gene that led to PTSD?
That’s just what Ya-Ping Tang, MD, PhD, a professor of cell biology at LSU, tried to do.
Joined by a research team, Dr. Tang hypothesized that a specific gene called CCKR-2 would increase vulnerability to stress.
So they raised a specific strain of mice who exhibited the gene, and compared them with a control group of mice with genes unaltered.
Researchers then conducted a series of experiments where both groups of mice were exposed to stressful stimuli at 25 days after birth, a stage comparable to the human adolescent period.
After being exposed to stress, the CCKR-2 mice showed a significantly higher level of PTSD-like behavior compared to the control mice. They also showed impaired spatial learning and memory.
What’s interesting, though, is the second experiment the researchers conducted: they exposed the mice to stress again, but suppressed the CCKR-2 gene during the exposure. This time, the control and CCKR-2-suppressed mice showed no significant difference.
So, the researchers’ hypothesis was confirmed: this particular gene seems to be related to the development of PTSD symptoms.
Of course, as we consider what this means for our patients, we have to remember that this study was conducted with mice. The CCKR-2 gene might not behave exactly the same way in humans.
Still, this research shows promise, and I’d like to see more work that identifies some of the genetic correlates of PTSD in humans.
Of course, regardless of PTSD’s causes, we need to find innovative and effective ways to treat it.
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What other factors have you seen contributing to PTSD? Are there consistent causes among many of your clients? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.
I grew up all over the world with a sibling who was two years older. We lived in war zones, famine zones and other nasty places. My sister’s response to the stress was to create an inner world with books, while I reached out and made contact with the people experiencing the trauma. Thankfully I speak 11 languages and many obscure dialects. After serving my country for 17 years with First Nations I decided to return to Africa. I worked in the bush under some of the most hellish conditions. I was conditioned by my family to continue because I was labelled the ‘sensitive’ one. But nothing prepared for my experiences. I realize I have been chasing the PTSD rush all my life and now that I am in treatment I miss it and long to replace it with a similar rush. But I am also a scientist so am wise enough not to do so. There may be something there with the PTSD gene.
Lots of excellent, thoughtful comments. I agree strongly that we are too quick to label, to quick to prescribe multiple drugs. We have much to learn about how other cultures manage some of the problems that afflict humanity. I have also found that people who have been abused as children have a very difficult time with anything they view as “other”, “unexpected”, “unpredictable”. Always on the alert for the next abuse, they over-react to these experiences.
I have found among my clients that those who respond to trauma with PTSD have had a history of emotional vulnerability. Often there are family members who have been diagnosed with emotional problems, or have committed suicide. In early studies of PTSD following the 2nd world war, the Speigels, father and son, were the first to suggest that those GIs who suffered from PTSD, exhibited other symptoms of emotional vulnerability. They used hypnotherapy to help with the symptoms.
You asked about other causes of PTSD. Living in Los Angeles I see people who are involved in multiple car accidents. I am one of them. I just got a copy of Diane Poole Heller’s book “Crash Course: A Self-Healing Guide To Auto Accident Trauma & Recovery.” My body responds each time I pick the book up.
It also seems that brain scans can detect Trauma. Does anyone know of a study of people with Complex Trauma where they are using scans? Doesn’t seem that this is used in clinical practice at this point.
This is is one area I find extremely uncomfortable, a dangerous ‘labelling’ of people who have ‘The Gene for PTSD’! It is very clear in all current genetic research that genes are frequently polyvalent, and more often than not act in concert. Although it is in no doubt that there is a genetic pre-disposition to stress (and most likely all other states!), this is an open invitation to pharmaceutical intervention – pop a pill to make it all go away – insurance companies are already mobilising their offering towards ‘gene profiling’, will employers want to offer the job to a ‘stress susceptible’ candidate?… Neuroscience is an extraordinary new tool for our toolkit, I fear it will also be the next limiting construct in our social evolution.
How else have we unwittingly relinquished our power? This has been a multi-fold and deeply embedded process. Babies are the epitome of sensitive and like sponges while they are incubating and for the first year of life during attachment and bonding, vulnerable to EXACTLY what is put in their way…penises, stress, alcohol, drugs, fear, VD, domestic violence, neglect, rejection…They are mirrors of what was initially put in their faces! And this starts happening chemically in utero , transferred through the mother’s emotions.
Coming down the birth canal, when a baby is born naturally, it’s body feels–gets a sense of it’s being and is given a sense of *I can do it* by that act of being born on his/her OWN steam and willpower. We, by birthing UNnaturally (on our backs without the natural use of gravity), take this exhilaration of *I can do it* down by many pegs. The child loses it’s sense of identity(never feels connected skin to skin with contact against the birth canal, in a C-section for example), and becomes lazy and convinced of it’s helplessness. The head set becomes: Oh, society *will pull me out of it*…and THAT is dependence, not empowerment.
For the mother, she gets no chance to be at the helm–in the case that she would choose to terminate the pregnancy, she’s guilt-tripped about her heartlessness, even though she knows this pregnancy is not going to provide the all-important *loving container* of two healthy parents.
Then at the hospital (and before) she will be pressed to do it *like everyone else*–fit in—don’t dare to demand what you want–take what you get! By her acceptance, she curtail’s the baby’s independence along with her own. Notice how science has NOT been driven by enterprising women: they defer to male medical models and men don’t even have vaginas! What happened to what the WOMAN needs in the birthing process?
I see genetics plays a part in everything we are—but it is epigenetics and society’s acceptance of female disempowerment…including pay fairness, that has brought us to this cut-throat place.
I’m so glad you blogged about this. I lived most of my life in mildde class neighborhoods and enjoyed a certain quality of life. In the flatlands of Oakland, good quality of life is hard to come by. If I had to single out two things that make life most different in the flats (and I won’t say ‘hood because where I live is sort of on the fringes of the ‘hood), outside of the increase in crime, it would be the garbage and the noise. And believe me, you get no sympathy from people when you complain about noise. Noise: Boom boxes at any time of day, one after another, sometimes double parked or just parked near your house; honking horns; gunfire (I once missed half a day of work waiting for the roof guy to plug a leak in my roof from a bullet) people of all ages raising hell until late at night; loud parties that start in the mildde of afternoon and last for 8-10 hours with amplified music placed outdoors; sirens; screeching tires from doing doughnuts; racing cars down the street; just to name a few. Oh and fireworks. Professional level fireworks that set off car alarms blocks away. Before Oakland had a fireworks ordinance, we suffered with fireworks from May until September. Now it’s a few days before and after July 4. July 4 is D-Day. It’s a big story every year in the Bay Area–how ridiculous did the fireworks get in Oakland on July 4. Moving is not always an option. Especially when the housing market has shaved the value of homes in my neighborhood by 50% or more. Also, I’m not 30 years old. I’m trying to lower my cost of living for retirement. Picking up a big fat mortgage is not something I want to do if I ever plan to semi retire. I have become increasingly concerned about my safety as the viciousness of crime grows. When I come home after dark, I’m totally paranoid. I have flood lights and motion detectors everywhere. A guy was shot to death while watering his front lawn. Another guy was shot to death unloading his laundry from the car. These were not thugs or gangbangers but family men, working men, minding their own business and someone decided they didn’t just want their money but needed to kill them too. One night I thought I heard raccoons stomping around on the back deck and it was a robbery suspect, I found out later. I made the cops search my massive and very dark backyard to insure the suspect didn’t leave any of his buddies behind. I couldn’t open my back door for a week because of paranoia about someone being back there. If someone is murdered a few steps from your front door, you have to put with a shrine and a nightly wake that lasts for days. The vigil involves young people getting drunk and high, shooting guns, writing massive graffiti on people’s homes, boom boxes, screaming tires, and large throngs of youth who mess with anyone trying to walk down the street. Oh, yeah, that’s a good time right there. So yes, urban PTSD definitely exists. But try to tell that to mildde class negroes. They glibly tell you to move. They will also tell you that if boom boxes are your biggest problem, yada, yada, yada. And that’s the thing. Boom boxes aren’t the biggest problem. On top of all the vandalism, garbage and crime, I have to put up with screaming loud music at any time, for any length of time. It’s what breaks the camel’s back. I have to put up with garbage, vandalism, AND a volume of noise to wake the dead? And the disrespectful young black men. The Latino males who don’t approve of my activism keep their mouths shut to me. But not the negroes. Young black men have a need to let you know just how vulgar and disrespectful they can be. Asians are mostly respectful and will be quiet if you ask. There aren’t any white youth left, just young white singles. I do fight back. I e-mail and call the cops regularly; same with my area neighborhood group; and I hold block meetings, etc. I don’t just whine online about it. But I am sick to death of it. I always look forward to winter and pray for lots of rain. Everyone just hates summer.
This was a rather blunt post I put out there to my wonderful sentient, yet vulnerable, friends after the latest tragedy in Boston. I believe this with all my heart and soul:
There is no doubt in my mind that some of us are more genetically susceptible to PTSD symptoms and so have formed extreme reactions from past personal stress events and/or by way of secondary trauma from watching violent or traumatic images now. If you are one of these, let me say that you do NOT have to watch every traumatic event and agonize and traumatize your soul again and again from the news. You do not have to do this. If you choose to do so, it is done at your own risk and at the risk of your physical and mental well being. I’ve said it before and I will continue to say, you CAN turn the television OFF. You can do that anytime your want. Peace and love to all.
I too appreciate Gertrude’s comment.
Scientific experiments that inflict sufficient stress on other living creatures to induce ptsd like symptoms (or any kind of harm) seem counter to healing intent. Just as continuing to treat returning soldiers, without even greater effort to end the source of their harm, seems unbalanced.
I’m appreciating this series greatly and it occurs to me now that it would also be valuable to include a session that looks not so much at the treatment of the after-effects but at how those who do see this after effects might speak up or act to help reduce occurrence in the first place.
As Native American taught us, each of our actions influence our descendants to the 7th generation. So of course genes are influenced by traumatic experiences in our bloodline, just as has been proven in a research about famineepisodes, which also influence genes generations later.
Nothing new, but i am worried about pharmaceutical companies, who think they can treat the gene and then the patient/client will be ok. These kind of researches often do not take the spiritual side of our beings as data in their research. We humans are not machines, where one can fix something broken. We are a intricate, complex system of multiple realities. Our trauma’s, our crisis, are treasured opportunities for major change, just as crisis is the opportunity for societies to change stagnant ways of living, that are no longer viable. Only some people will be capable to be a changeagent, they can lead our humanity in a new human paradigm, a sustainable future. As Rupert Sheldrake claimed in his research, after one person changes something in the morphogenetic field, for each next person it will become easier. Being that first person, or one of them, is an extremely painful process, that takes tremendous courage. In memory of my Huguenot ancestors, who were slaughtered in France and for the benefit of future generations, i feel, my sould made this choice, prior to conception.
Dear Gertrude,
I love what you said in your comment! I agree with all of it! Thanks for reminding me of the courage it takes to change something for the better and that it is a very painful process. I feel almost every day of my life that that is the way it is. And it is so hard to know when something has been done that will help make things easier for the ones that follow and when not. And it is also not easy not to worry about all of that all the time. All the best to you, greetings from Germany, Ellen