A small study suggests that adults whose parents are Holocaust survivors with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) appear to have lower average levels of the stress hormone cortisol than the adult offspring of parents without PTSD, according to a report in the September issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. Biological differences seen in individuals with PTSD, including low cortisol levels, could either result from exposure to a traumatic event or could be present before such an event and predispose patients to the condition, according to background information in the article. “Once identified, such risk factors may prove to be useful as predictors of who will develop PTSD after exposure to trauma, or they may even identify potential new targets for prophylaxis [preventive therapy] and treatment,” the authors write. Join discussion...