Evidence for excess familial clustering of post traumatic stress disorder in the US veterans genealogy resource
- Cannon-Albright, L. A., Romesser, J., Teerlink, C. C., Thomas, A., & Meyer, L. J. (2022). Evidence for excess familial clustering of post traumatic stress disorder in the US Veterans genealogy resource. Journal of Psychiatric Research, 150, 332-337. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpsychires.2021.12.018
- A genealogy of the United States (US) was created by combining public data on over 70 million individuals’ ancestors and descendants, representing 20-25% of the population. The US Veterans Genealogy Project linked the US genealogy data with demographic and medical record data from the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) to examine health-related outcomes and family patterns across generations of Veterans. This current study used these linked records to examine possible familial clustering (i.e., the presence of a disease within a family beyond what is expected) of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) diagnoses. The Veteran data included 284,382 VHA patients and their more than 3 million ancestors. Analyses compared observed, or actual, relatedness among individuals with PTSD with the expected relatedness among similar individuals in the same population to identify excess relatedness and increased familial risk of PTSD. Results provided emerging evidence indicating a heritable component to PTSD predisposition; that evidence included systematic clustering of individuals with PTSD in the same family line, elevated risk of PTSD for first-, second-, and third-degree relatives, and the identification of multiple high-risk family lines.
Report Link
Publication Type
Focus Terms
Branch of Service
Military Affiliation
Subject Affiliation
Population
Methodology
Sponsors
Publisher/Sponsoring Organization
Author Affiliation
Newsletter Date
Research summaries convey terminology used by the scientists who authored the original research article; some terminology may not align with the federal government's mandated language for certain constructs.