Childhood abuse damages stress coping genes

New York, February 23:A new research has found that childhood abuse may permanently alter the way in which people respond to stress, possibly making them more vulnerable to suicide.

The research, conducted by researchers at the McGill University and Douglas Institute, warns that abuse in early childhood can lead to genetic reprogramming that may leave a person susceptible to mental illness and suicide.

Montreal researchers’ team reached their discovery after examining the brains of 24 suicide victims, including 12 who had been victims of severe childhood abuse, which included physical abuse, neglect or sexual contact, and 12 others, who had not been abused.

Experts found that those who were physically or sexually abused as children had lower levels of expression of the gene NR3C1, which affects a person’s ability to deal with stress.

They witnessed the "epigenetic" changes in the brain tissue of the abused group, which is known to increase the risk of suicide.

"And what we found was that those individuals that had been abused and neglected during childhood were more likely to have increased epigenetic regulation of this gene," said study co-author Dr. Gustavo Turecki, a psychiatrist and neuroscientist.

"What that means is that these people would be less well-prepared to deal with stress and to react to stress."

Extra genetic marks were not however found in the 12 suicide victims who were not abused. The same was true of people who had died from causes other than suicide and had not suffered childhood abuse.

The McGill scientists hope the discovery of epigenetic changes in abuse victims could one day pave the way for developing a drug that would reverse the damage.

But, according to study co-author Moshe Szyf, who is an epigeneticist in McGill's department of pharmacology and therapeutics, the development of the drug is only possible if researchers identify similar epigenetic makings in the DNA of a person's blood, as brain tissue can only be analyzed after death.

"The implications at this stage are you want to identify these people and then probably offer them some sort of intervention," said Szyf. The goal, he said, would be to find drugs that could reverse the epigenetic changes.

"We don't know how to do it yet. We might know in the future, but we don't know how to do it now."

The latest findings were published Sunday in Nature Neuroscience.