Pregnant women present during the September 11 World Trade Center collapse have passed on markers of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) to their unborn babies through transgenerational transmission. The findings strengthen the evidence for in utero or early life risk factors for the later development of adult mental or physical disorders.
The study will be published online today in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, one of the four journals produced by The Endocrine Society.
Previous studies led researchers to believe that reduced cortisol levels observed in the adult children of Holocaust survivors could be attributed to mostly environmental factors, such as the stress of living with a parent who is depressed or anxious, or the experience of vicarious traumatization based on hearing stories of how parents suffered, rather than a 'transmitted' biological trait. "In the current study, reduced stress hormone levels were observed in infants, suggesting a larger role for very early environmental, genetic, or genetic-environmental interactions than previously thought," explains Rachel Yehuda, Ph.D., principal investigator of the study.