Epigenomic biomarkers of posttraumatic stress disorder

Biomarkers of PTSD are greatly needed because of the challenges to diagnose and treat due to stigma, biases in self-reporting, and limitations of identifying those at risk and the scarcity of tools to predict treatment outcome. PTSD is influenced by both genetic and environmental factors as well as its interplay. Because of the dynamic and context-dependent nature of epigenetic modifications, these offer great promise as biomarkers of PTSD for the prevention, prognosis, and prediction of treatment outcome. In this chapter, genomic and epigenomic studies of PTSD are discussed. Epigenomic studies of PTSD conducted to date include DNA methylation (including DNA methylation age), histone modifications, and noncoding RNAs. Further, we discuss recent work using integrative multiomics approach as well as related gaps, challenges, and future directions aimed at identifying biomarkers of PTSD.