Citation

Taylor MK, Hernández LM, Stump J, Tschiffely AE, Goforth CW, Laver DC, Ahlers ST. Psychiatry Res. 2019; 280: e112519.

Affiliation

Neurotrauma Department, Operational and Undersea Medicine Directorate, Naval Medical Research Center, Silver Spring, MD, USA.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2019, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.psychres.2019.112519

PMID

31442670

Abstract

The first of its kind, this study determined whether blast exposure interacts with genetic variant 5HTTLPR to predict posttraumatic stress (PTS) symptoms in 78 military explosives operators. In all models, blast-exposed 5HTTLPR S carriers registered definitively higher PTS symptoms in comparison to non-exposed S carriers, as well as exposed and non-exposed LL carriers (all p < 0.01). All findings were robust to confounding influences of age and traumatic brain injury diagnosis. Not only is blast exposure prevalent in EOD personnel, but it also interacts with genetic predisposition to predict trauma symptoms in this unique, at-risk military population.

Copyright © 2019. Published by Elsevier B.V.

Language: en

Keywords

Blast exposure; Genetics; Posttraumatic stress