Does Prenatal Stress Shape Postnatal Resilience? – An Epigenome-Wide Study on Violence and Mental Health in Humans

Conclusion We provide human evidence that children exposed to prenatal stress may experience resilience driven by epigenome-wide interactions. This plausibly translates animal findings and suggests that prenatal psychiatric risk factors may have different, and maybe even opposite, consequences in different world populations. Our findings therefore call for more research on personalizing psychiatric practices according to social and community backgrounds. By studying the gene–environment interactions in some of these world populations, we have also discovered a novel phenomenon that may be refined into a biomarker for mental burden, namely the stress-induced methylome switch. We hope that this discovery may lead to innovative molecular diagnostic tools in psychiatry, with profound impact on our understanding and treatment of mental disorders. Author Contributions TE, DN, FS, MS, and SA: conceptualization. FS, JS, and KR: investigation/sample collection. TE, DN, and SA: supervision. DN, FS, and KR: formal analysis. TE, DN, FS, and TH: methodology. JS and VV: validation. TE, DN, and FS: funding acquisition and writing – original draft preparation. TE, DN, SA, and VV: resources. All authors reviewed and/or edited the manuscript. Funding This work was supported by grants from the European Research Council (ERC) advanced grant (323977 to TE), CAPES/DAAD (to FS), Swedish Brain Foundation (to DN), and Swedish Society for Medical Research (to DN). Conflict of Inter...
Source: Frontiers in Genetics - Category: Genetics & Stem Cells Source Type: research