Cardiovascular risks in relation to posttraumatic stress severity among young trauma-exposed women

Abstract

The present results support the contention that, in the absence of medical illness, posttraumatic stress symptom severity among young women is associated with several CVD risk factors early in life.

Military Sexual Trauma Exposure and Heart Rate Variability Outcomes in Female Veterans

“…Allostasis, the dynamic interplay of an organism's regulatory compensation to continual change is a theoretical framework (Groer & Burns, 2009;McEwen, 2004;Sterling & Eyer, 1988) for the contribution of stress to excessive sympathetic and decreased parasympathetic activity. Ongoing research supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is presently exploring the cardiovascular impact of traumatic events (Rich-Edwards, 2008) and PTSD (Kibler, 2008) in civilian women. However, additional work exploring the relationship between exposure to MST in female veterans and decreased HRV is needed to add to the existing body of scientific knowledge.…”

Stress and Cardiometabolic Disease Risk for Indigenous Populations throughout the Lifespan

“…Consequently, both the experience of trauma and the development of PTSD have been linked to CVD and hypertension through a myriad of biological, behavioral, and psychosocial pathways, although the majority of this research has been done in non-Indigenous populations [57,[163][164][165][166]. However, a number of studies have focused on the relationship between trauma, PTSD, and CVD among AI/ANs, specifically [167].…”

Sex differences in the association between PTSD symptoms with cardiac autonomic function and subclinical atherosclerotic risk

“…Many studies to date examining the impact of PTSD on subclinical CVD are conducted in older men and predominantly in the military veteran population (Dedert, Calhoun, Watkins, Sherwood, & Beckham, 2010). As such, less in known concerning the cardiovascular effects of PTSD on women, particularly on younger women without an overt history of CVD (Kibler et al., 2018).…”

“…Parenthetically, the prevalence of PTSD is twofold to threefold higher in women compared to men (Olff, 2017; Vieweg et al., 2006). It is reasonable to speculate that the burden of CVD related to PTSD may one day be greater in women (Kibler et al., 2018). There are well‐established sex differences in the cardiovascular response to both acute and chronic stress (L. Taylor, Makarem, Shimbo, & Aggarwal, 2018; Medina‐Inojosa et al., 2019).…”

“…Parenthetically, the prevalence of PTSD is twofold to threefold higher in women compared to men (Olff, 2017;Vieweg et al, 2006). It is reasonable to speculate that the burden of CVD related to PTSD may one day be greater in women (Kibler et al, 2018).…”