Yehuda acknowledges that the paper was blown out of proportion in some reports, and larger studies assessing several generations would be needed draw firm conclusions. Without looking at several generations and searching more widely in the genome, we can’t be sure it is really epigenetic inheritance. Researchers have criticised the conclusions of the study. The study was small, assessing just 32 Holocaust survivors and a total of 22 of their children, with a small control group. “The idea of a signal, an epigenetic finding that is in offspring of trauma survivors can mean a lot of things,” says Rachel Yehuda, director of the Traumatic Stress Studies Division at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine and an author of the study. A 2015 study found that the children of the survivors of the Holocaust had epigenetic changes to a gene that was linked to their levels of cortisol, a hormone involved in the stress response. Some studies have proved more controversial than others. This effect is consistent with studies in remote Swedish villages, where shortages in food supply had a generational effect down the male line, but not the female line.īut what if this increased risk of death was due to a legacy of the father’s trauma that had nothing to do with DNA? What if traumatised fathers were more likely to abuse their children, leading to long-term health consequences, and sons bore the brunt of it more than daughters? “The hypothesis is that there’s an epigenetic effect on the Y chromosome,” says Costa. With a genetic cause ruled out, the most plausible explanation left was an epigenetic effect. If it were a genetic trait then children born before and after the war would be equally likely to show the reduced life expectancy. “However, if you look within families, there are only effects among sons born after but not before the war.” “What could have happened is that a genetic trait which enabled the father to survive the camp, a tendency toward obesity for example, was then bad during normal times,” says Costa. These tags turn genes on or off, offering a way of adapting to changing conditions without inflicting a more permanent shift in our genomes. Tiny chemical tags are added to or removed from our DNA in response to changes in the environment in which we are living. This is the process of epigenetics, where the readability, or expression, of genes is modified without changing the DNA code itself. Instead, the researchers were investigating a much more obscure type of inheritance: how events in someone’s lifetime can change the way their DNA is expressed, and how that change can be passed on to the next generation. It appeared the PoWs had passed on some element of their trauma to their offspring.īut unlike most inherited conditions, this was not caused by mutations to the genetic code itself. While their sons and grandsons had not suffered the hardships of the PoW camps – and if anything were well provided for through their childhoods – they suffered higher rates of mortality than the wider population. It also had an effect on the prisoners’ children and grandchildren, which appeared to be passed down the male line of families. But the impact of these hardships did not stop with those who experienced it. They returned to society with impaired health, worse job prospects and shorter life expectancy. Prisoner death rates soared.įor those who survived, the harrowing experiences marked many of them for life. There was such overcrowding in some camps that the prisoners, Union Army soldiers from the north, each had the square footage of a grave. We all know the information and discussions contained in this video will be helpful for those of us in need of healing.In 1864, nearing the end of the US Civil War, conditions in the Confederate prisoner of war camps were at their worst. Please share this program broadly with your family, friends, and community. Musical Guest Live From Italy Angela AmatoĬurated and Produced by Jeffery Giesener - Founder of the JCHR and Dr. Into The Light 3.0: Managing Intergenerational Survivor Trauma Jewish Culture and Holocaust Remembrance Group and JCHR Facebook Group / jewis.
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