The difficulties of life are imprinted in our bodies. And when they are truly ardue, even on those of our descendants. The biological impact of wars, violence, catastrophes and other sources of intense stress persists for a long time, and produces hereditable (or epigenetic) changes that could influence health by increasing, for example, the susceptibility to anxiety and depression. This is what emerges from an international study, recently published in the Scientific Reports magazine.
The study was carried out thanks to the contribution of 48 families of Syrian refugees currently residing in Jordan, made up of at least three generations and in which at least one of the women of the family (today’s grandmothers or mothers) was pregnant and was forced to flee during the dramatic events of the 1982 Hama massacre (the lethal repression of an insurrection in the Syrian city of the same name by the troops of the then dictator of the country, Hafiz. al-ASAD) or the 2011 civil war.
The researchers were able to collect 131 DNA samples from as many components of the 48 refugees families, and therefore analyzed them in search of epigenetic markers, molecules that influence the expression of DNA, and which can be transmitted to the offspring, in a form of inheritance not strictly “genetic” (that is, the appearance of real genetic mutations).
The DNA changed by the war
Then using the champions collected by other Syrian families who had already left the country before the internal disorders of the 80s as a control group, they were able to verify the presence of epigenetic changes in individuals where mothers or grandmothers had been exposed to the trauma of the war. And in fact, 14 areas of their genome showed the presence of epigenetic changes.
Another 21 epigenetic alterations emerged in the genome of grandmothers and mothers directly exposed to violence, with characteristics that allow to consider all the changes identified in women and in their offspring as a consequence of the same stressful event experienced during conflicts, and the consequent escape from the country.
At the moment, it is impossible to establish with certainty if, and which, consequences of health have the epigenetic changes identified by the study. What is certain, however, is that living a strong trauma, whether it is war or domestic violence, leaves scars not only in the psyche, but also in the human body. A discovery with a highly symbolic meaning, as the study authors themselves point out.
“The idea that trauma and violence can have repercussions on future generations should help us to be more empathic, and push legislators to pay more attention to the problem of violence,” says Connie Mulligan, researcher of the University of Florida who participated in the study. “It could even help explain the presence of intergenerational cycles of abuse, trauma and poverty apparently impossible to break, which are seen all over the world, including the United States”.