If a person has experienced stress in early childhood, it can affect the development of depression in adulthood. This writes The Hindustan Times, reports UNIAN.
Scientists conducted an experiment with mice. It turned out, stress in childhood has led to changes in the level of expression of hundreds of genes in the ventral region of the brain. In the end, the brain was predisposed to depression for the rest of my life.
The problem is revealed only after exposure to additional stress factor. In the body there is a switch of the genetic changes in transcription factor Otx2. There is a time window when the body is particularly sensitive to external influences.
In mice it was around 10-20 days from the moment of birth – in animals suppressed Otx2 in the ventral region of the brain. Although the maturity level of Otx2 was restored, the genome has already momentous changes that stayed with the animal for life. It was also found that suppression of Otx2 in childhood have led to increased sensitivity to stress in adulthood.
