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Thai tsunami victims' DNA may unlock stress disorder mystery
2007-01-04
Thai scientists have collected blood and DNA samples from 3,000 villagers from six tsunami-hit Thai provinces to help identify which genes are associated with post-traumatic stress disorder. Verayuth Praphanphoj, director of the government's Centre for Medical Genetics Research, said it was a unique opportunity to try to determine why people with a shared traumatic experience reacted differently. "It is a great chance for doing this research, because it is difficult to find a large amount of people who have suffered in the same environment," he told AFP on Thursday. The Indian Ocean tsunami on December 26, 2004, killed about 5,400 people in Thailand and destroyed tens of thousands of homes. Many lost loved ones, or were injured when they were swept away with debris and corpses. Verayuth said he believed post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) was caused by a combination of genes and environment. He said 3,000 samples were collected from villagers from tsunami-hit provinces in mid-2005, half from people who were showing signs of PTSD, and half from those who did not appear to be suffering from the ailment. The centre is now awaiting government funding for the next step in the research, which involves decoding the genes and studying them. They hope this will lead to the development of a medicine that could cure PTSD. The study, which Verayuth said was the first of its kind in Thailand, is being carried out with the Thailand Centre of Excellence for Life Sciences and Bangkok's Chulalongkorn University.
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