Sexual abuse leaves a fingerprint
Investigators at Leiden (the Netherlands) University performed neuroimaging that looked at numerous brain regions of interest in 21 adolescents with childhood sexual abuse–related PTSD and 25 matched healthy controls. The standout finding was that the dorsal gray matter volume of the anterior cingulate cortex was significantly smaller in the teens with PTSD and a history of childhood sexual abuse (Eur Neuropsychopharmacol. 2017 Nov;27[11]:1163-71).
The investigators wanted a pure sample of patients with PTSD after childhood sexual abuse, so they excluded individuals who had experienced childhood sexual abuse and had a diagnosis of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, conduct disorder, pervasive developmental disorder, bipolar disorder, or a psychotic disorder. That is both a strength and a limitation of the study, in Dr. Castro-Fornieles’ view.
“To me, that excludes too many of the children we see in our clinical settings. This work needs to be corroborated in a bigger sample, including patients with other diagnoses,” she said.
She reported having no financial conflicts regarding her presentation.