ABSTRACT

Background: Little is known about the development of Prolonged Grief Disorder (PGD) symptoms over time in adults. For clinical purposes, it would be useful to have knowledge about early indicators of a problematic grief trajectory.

Objective: This study aimed to identify classes of bereaved individuals with similar trajectories of PGD symptoms and to design a provisional screening tool including symptoms predicting membership of classes with problematic grief trajectories.

Although it is assumed that epigenetic mechanisms, such as changes in DNA methylation (DNAm), underlie the relationship between adverse intrauterine conditions and adult metabolic health, evidence from human studies remains scarce. Therefore, we evaluated whether DNAm in whole blood mediated the association between prenatal famine exposure and metabolic health in 422 individuals exposed to famine in utero and 463 (sibling) controls.

Key Points

Question  Is a brief, exposure-based treatment noninferior to the more time-intensive cognitive processing therapy in the treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder?

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a mental disorder that may develop after exposure to exceptionally threatening or unescapable horrifying events. Actual therapies fail to alleviate the emotional suffering and cognitive impairment associated with this disorder, mostly because they are ineffective in treating the failure to extinguish trauma memories in a great percentage of those affected. In this review, current behavioral, cellular, and molecular evidence supporting the use of cotinine for treating PTSD are reviewed.