Victims of War: Contribution of the Cholinergic System to the Development of PTSD in Children and Adolescents in Palestine and Israel
Final Report Abstract
In summary, the extension of the DFG grant allowed us to achieve several important steps in the context of traumatic stress research, but also in the improved collaboration and interaction between Palestinian, Israeli, and German research groups. With respect to endocrine indicators for long-term stress, the data confirmed and extended current influential models of hormonal secretion over different phases of traumatic stress. The imaging data revealed novel findings regarding the functional relationship between microstructural integrity of specific CC portions and altered cognitive, and specifically memory, performance in PTSD. The preliminary findings from the genetic data demonstrate the contextdependent contribution of variations in genomic sequences to long-term stress reactions, opening new venues for understanding the impact of relevant non-coding RNA candidates on PTSD. Integrating structural, molecular and cell and animal approaches can open new venues for identifying the complex regulators governing cholinergic functioning in PTSD. In general, the results may have consequences for diagnostic tools and future studies aimed at identifying individuals at risk for PTSD, and in turn, develop individual-based treatments that assist in preventing the chronicity of this disorder. More than the scientific contribution of the grant, however, the social and societal implications cannot be stressed enough. The fact that German, Israeli, and Palestinian scientists worked together, visited each other’s countries and exchanged idea with respect to scientific and mundane contexts, and that fruitful collaborations and networks which will exist for the future years to come could be established, in our opinion, may be viewed as the most significant and sustainable result of this scientific collaboration.
Publications
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(2018). Victims of War – Psychoendocrine Evidence for the Impact of Traumatic Stress on Psychological Well-Being of Adolescents Growing Up during the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. Psychophysiology, e13271
Shaheen, M., Schindler, L., Saar-Ashkenazy, R., Bani Odeh, K., Soreq, H., Friedman, A., & Kirschbaum, C.
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(2012). Fluoxetine induces vasodilatation of cerebral arterioles by co-modulating NO/muscarinic signalling. Journal of cellular and molecular medicine 16, 2736–2744
Ofek, K., Schoknecht, K., Melamed-Book, N., Heinemann, U., Friedman, A., Soreq, H.
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(2012). Post-traumatic anxiety associates with failure of the innate immune receptor TLR9 to evade the pro-inflammatory NFκB pathway. Transl Psychiatry 2, e78
Zimmermann, G., Shaltiel, G., Barbash, S., Cohen, J., Gasho, C.J., Shenhar-Tsarfaty, S., Shalev, H., Berliner, S.A., Shelef, I., Shoham, S., Friedman, A., Cohen, H., Soreq, H.
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(2013). Hippocampal microRNA-132 mediates stress-inducible cognitive deficits through its acetylcholinesterase target. Brain structure & function 218, 59–72
Shaltiel, G., Hanan, M., Wolf, Y., Barbash, S., Kovalev, E., Shoham, S., Soreq, H.
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(2014). Competing targets of microRNA-608 affect anxiety and hypertension. Human molecular genetics 23, 4569–4580
Hanin, G., Shenhar-Tsarfaty, S., Yayon, N., Yau, Y.H., Hoe, Y.Y., Bennett, E.R., Sklan, E.H., Rao, D.C., Rankinen, T., Bouchard, C., Geifman-Shochat, S., Shifman, S., Greenberg, D.S., Soreq, H.
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(2014). Reduced corpus-callosum volume in posttraumatic stress disorder highlights the importance of interhemispheric connectivity for associative memory. J Trauma Stress 27, 18–26
Saar-Ashkenazy, R., Cohen, J.E., Guez, J., Gasho, C., Shelef, I., Friedman, A., Shalev, H.
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(2015). Altered processing of visual emotional stimuli in posttraumatic stress disorder: an event-related potential study. Psychiatry Res 233, 165–174
Saar-Ashkenazy, R., Shalev, H., Kanthak, M.K., Guez, J., Friedman, A., Cohen, J.E.
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(2016). Breakdown of Inter-Hemispheric Connectivity Is Associated with Posttraumatic Symptomatology and Memory Impairment. PloS one 11, e0144766
Saar-Ashkenazy, R., Veksler, R., Guez, J., Jacob, Y., Shelef, I., Shalev, H., Friedman, A., Cohen, J.E.
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(2016). Intensified vmPFC surveillance over PTSS under perturbed microRNA-608/AChE interaction. Transl Psychiatry 6, e801
Lin, T., Simchovitz, A., Shenhar-Tsarfaty, S., Vaisvaser, S., Admon, R., Hanin, G., Hanan, M., Kliper, E., Bar-Haim, Y., Shomron, N., Fernandez, G., Lubin, G., Fruchter, E., Hendler, T., Soreq, H.
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(2019). Victims of War: Dehydroepiandrosterone Concentrations in Hair and Their Associations with Trauma Sequelae in Palestinian Adolescents Living in the West Bank. Brain Sciences, 9(2), 20
Schindler, L., Shaheen, M., Saar-Ashkenazy, R., Bani Odeh, K., Sass, S.-H., Friedman, A., & Kirschbaum, C.
