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War Trauma Scars Pose Risk of Heart Disease

by Medindia Content Team on Jan 2 2007 11:16 AM

A major study of about 2000 military veterans who served in the armed forces during the second world war prove that they suffer from symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).The study also suggests that they stand a greater risk of heart disease as their live unfolds. Researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston conducted this study.

PTSD is seen following traumatic incidences in a person’s life .A person who suffers from PTSD shows signs of severe anxiety, aversion to face similar stimuli again. The researchers pointed that when each symptom is stepped up in an individual, the risk of suffering from cardiac illness later is increased by 26%.

The pattern of effects noted by the researchers suggest that individuals who have greater levels of post-traumatic stress disorder gauged by symptoms , need not necessarily report more pain in chest or other similar symptoms but may stand more chances of developing coronary heart disease expressed the author of the study ,Laura Kubzansky ,in the journal Archives of General Psychiatry. She studies anxiety, depression and anger that are the triggers for heart disease. In fact veterans with PTSD showed lesser sensitivity to physical pain in another unrelated study, also published in the same study. Dutch veterans in the parallel study ,were exposed to different temperatures on their hands by scientists at Central Military Hospital in a research led by Elbert Geuze 12 of the 24 veterans who went through this study suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder .They sensed lesser pain than those who didn’t have the disorder.

Images recorded of the war veterans' brains when the temperature experiment was conducted show a different pattern in which pain is processed in the brain. Researchers warn that this is a pointer to the immense needs of the war veterans that have to be met with as they return to the U.S from Iraq and Afghanistan

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Source-Medindia
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