Peripheral blood transcriptome profiles in Nepali child soldiers and civilians.. Homo sapiens

Analysis of transcript abundance estimates as a function of child soldier status, PTSD symptoms, and psychological resilience. Overall design: Gene expression profiling was conducted on dried blood spot (DBS) samples collected from community dwelling adolescents and young adults in Nepal. Approximatley half of the sample were former child soldiers in the Nepal People's War and the other half were demographically similiar civilian non-combatants. In addition to basic demographic characteristics (age, sex, ethnic minority status, social caste status, education level), participants were also assessed on syptoms of post-traumatic stress (PTS, assessed by a culturally adapted version of The Child PTSD Symptom Scale; Kohrt BA, et al. (2011) Validation of cross-cultural child mental health and psychosocial research instruments: adapting the Depression Self-Rating Scale and Child PTSD Symptom Scale in Nepal. BMC Psychiatry 11(1):e127, with higher values indicating greater PTSD symptoms) and psychological resilience (assessed by a culturally adapted version of the Resilience Scale; Wagnild GM & Young HM (1993) Development and psychometric evaluation of the Resilience Scale. Journal of Nursing Measurement, with higher values indicating greater resilience). Dichotomous variables were coded 0=no/absent and 1=yes/present. Valid gene expression data are available for 254 samples.