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Free keywords:
Posttraumatic stress disorder, PTSD, Combat-related PTSD, Biomarkers for PTSD, Risk markers for PTSD
Abstract:
Biomarkers allowing the identification of individuals with an above
average vulnerability or resilience for posttraumatic stress disorder
(PTSD) would especially serve populations at high risk for trauma
exposure like firefighters, police officers and combat soldiers. Aiming
to identify the most promising putative PTSD vulnerability markers, we
conducted the first systematic review on potential imaging and
non-genetic molecular markers for PTSD risk and resilience. Following
the PRISMA guidelines, we systematically screened the PubMed database
for prospective longitudinal clinical studies and twin studies reporting
on pre-trauma and post-trauma PTSD risk and resilience biomarkers. Using
25 different combinations of search terms, we retrieved 8151 articles of
which we finally included and evaluated 9 imaging and 27 molecular
studies. In addition, we briefly illustrate the design of the ongoing
prospective German Armed Forces (Bundeswehr) PTSD biomarker study
(Bw-BioPTSD) which not only aims to validate these previous findings but
also to identify novel and clinically applicable molecular,
psychological and imaging risk, resilience and disease markers for
deployment-related psychopathology in a cohort of German soldiers who
served in Afghanistan. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
