PTSD can run in families

LOS ANGELES, Dec. 19 (UPI) -- U.S. researchers say they've found a genetic component that suggests vulnerability to post-traumatic stress disorder runs in families.

University of California, Los Angeles, researchers studied 200 people from 12 multigenerational families, all survivors of a 1988 earthquake in Armenia that killed 17,000 people.

Armen Goenjian said 41 percent of the PTSD symptoms, 61 percent of depressive symptoms and 66 percent of anxiety symptoms were due to genetic factors.

The findings are published in the journal Psychiatric Genetics.

"This was a study of multigenerational family members -- parents and offspring, grandparents and grandchildren, siblings, and so on -- and we found that the genetic makeup of some of these individuals renders them more vulnerable to develop PTSD, anxiety and depressive symptoms," Goenjian, lead author of the study, said Friday in a release.

Goenjian said the study also suggests that a large percentage of genes are shared between the disorders.

"That tracks with clinical experience," he said. "For example, in clinical practice, the therapist will often discover that patients who come in for treatment of depression have coexisting anxiety."