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Risks for comorbid medical and psychiatric disorders are elevated in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which is more likely to occur after severe stress in people who were traumatized in childhood than in those without childhood trauma histories. These researchers examined how moderately severe PTSD affects leukocyte telomere length (LTL), a marker of biological age. Short LTL is thought to predict mortality and age-related diseases; other researchers have linked short LTL to early abandonment or stress (JW Psychiatry Jun 13 2011).
Participants were 43 adults with PTSD and 47 controls with or without childhood traumas. Eighteen PTSD patients and no controls had experienced multiple kinds of childhood trauma (physical neglect, family vio…