Routine Blood Tests Identify Biomarkers Linked to PTSD

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is associated with a range of chronic physical health conditions and affects multiple organ systems. Clinical laboratories routinely measure blood analytes that reflect cardiometabolic, immune, and hepatic function, creating an opportunity to capture the disorder’s systemic impact during routine care. New findings now show that widely ordered blood tests can identify 16 biomarkers associated with PTSD.

Mass General Brigham (Boston, MA, USA), together with the Broad Trauma Initiative and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, identified a set of scalable, blood-based biomarkers associated with PTSD using common clinical laboratory tests. The work, published in Molecular Psychiatry, indicates that routine assays may reflect the disorder’s systemic footprint. The institutions emphasize that these tests are already part of everyday medical care.

Investigators analyzed data from 23,743 adult participants in the Mass General Brigham Biobank by combining genomic information with electronic health records (EHR). They estimated genetic risk for PTSD using multiple associated genetic variants and clinical risk from PTSD diagnoses recorded in the EHR. This approach enabled systematic evaluation of routinely collected laboratory measures across organ systems.

The analysis identified 16 clinical laboratory markers consistently associated with both genetic risk for PTSD and diagnostic history of PTSD. The biomarkers include cholesterol and glucose levels; liver indicators such as albumin and bilirubin; and red and white blood cell counts. Further genetic analysis supports that PTSD is likely to cause changes in these biomarkers rather than the biomarkers influencing development of PTSD.

According to the institutions, validating these biomarkers in larger and more diverse populations is a key next step toward using routine laboratory testing to support PTSD care in everyday clinical practice. The findings aim to help explain why PTSD is linked to chronic disease risk by capturing cardiometabolic, immune, and hepatic changes. The research was conducted by Mass General Brigham with collaborators from the Broad Trauma Initiative and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

“Importantly, our study suggests that PTSD could lead to widespread physical changes affecting cardiometabolic health, immune health, and hepatic health, pointing to PTSD as an upstream contributor to these adverse biomarker profiles," said Younga (Heather) Lee, Ph.D., Instructor, Department of Psychiatry, Mass General Brigham. "Finding scalable, blood-based biomarkers could help inform timely interventions aimed at mitigating chronic disease risk, which could ultimately improve long-term health outcomes among patients living with PTSD.” 

“This multi-system impact helps us understand why untreated PTSD can have such devastating effects on patients' overall health. It underscores the importance of moving away from treating PTSD in isolation and toward recognizing its effects across the body,” said Dr. Lee.

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