Sex Differences in Stress-Related Psychiatric Disorders: Neurobiological Perspectives

By D. Bangasser, R. Valentino. Frontiers in neuroendocrinology (Print), 2014

671 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Stress is associated with the onset and severity of several psychiatric disorders that occur more frequently in women than men, including posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression. Patients with these disorders present with dysregulation of several stress response systems, including the neuroendocrine response to stress, corticolimbic responses to negatively valenced stimuli, and hyperarousal. Thus, sex differences within their underlying circuitry may explain sex biases in disease prevalence. This review describes clinical studies that identify sex differences within the activity of these circuits, as well as preclinical studies that demonstrate cellular and molecular sex differences in stress responses systems. These studies reveal sex differences from the molecular to the systems level that increase endocrine, emotional, and arousal responses to stress in females. Exploring these sex differences is critical because this research can reveal the neurobiological underpinnings of vulnerability to stress-related psychiatric disorders and guide the development of novel pharmacotherapies.

Subfields: Behavioral Neuroscience, Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/2646dfb9010b22061b63dd56dd228fc9fa5174e7

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Citations in the corpus

Sex differences in anxiety and depression clinical perspectives (2014, background): “It remains to be seen whether the sex differences in central CRH and noradrenergic regulation observed in rodents (Bangasser and Valentino, 2014) also are present in humans and to what degree they may contribute to increased rates of depression and anxiety disorders in women.”
Posttraumatic stress disorder in the World Mental Health Surveys (2017, background): “Across a range of types of trauma exposure, women are approximately twice as likely as men to be diagnosed with PTSD (Tolin & Foa, 2006; Bangasser & Valentino, 2014).”
Sex Differences in Animal Models: Focus on Addiction (2016, background): “Both males and females exhibit a corticotropin-releasing factor-1 (CRF1) receptor response to stimulation with CRF, for example, but there is a difference in the intracellular signaling pathways (Bangasser and Valentino, 2014).”