07.30.07

McGill University Exploring Link Between Childhood Abuse and Adult Suicide

Posted in news links at 10:51 am by Trevor

Canadian weekly magazine Maclean’s has published a brief article profiling the ongoing work of Dr. Moshe Szyf of McGill University, who for years has been at the forefront of cancer and nutritional epigenetics. Dr. Szyf is currently collaborating with McGill neuroscientist Dr. Gustavo Terecki, director of the McGill Group for Suicide Studies. A brief synopsis and early results from the study:

The brains of eight men who had died were analyzed. Their medical records showed that each of them had experienced childhood abuse — physical, sexual or mental, or a combination of the three. All had committed suicide in their mid-thirties. The chemical marking on their brain DNA was compared to that of people who had non-abusive childhoods and died of natural causes.The results will likely be published later this year, but Maclean’s was given an early synopsis. The gene regulating stress was less active in the eight men. Szyf and Turecki both speculate this left the men hard-wired to have problems coping, which may have contributed to their suicides.

Dr. Moshe Szyf was also founder of biopharmaceutical company MethylGene, Inc., and was the founding editor of the Landes Bioscience journal Epigenetics. Link