Exposure to a large-scale disaster, such as a tsunami, impacts population health over a decade later.
Exposure to a large-scale disaster, such as a tsunami, impacts population health over a decade later. A new study by an inter-disciplinary team of researchers in the United States and Indonesia has found that women who lived along the coast of Aceh, Indonesia when it was hit by waves from the 2004 tsunami have lower cortisol levels 14 years later than women who lived in other, nearby coastal communities that were not directly affected.
Cortisol is a stress hormone produced by the adrenal glands. Cortisol levels rise in response to stress as part of the fight or flight response, but consistently elevated stress can result in dysregulation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. The study links the stresses from exposure to the tsunami to “burnout” of the HPA-axis which manifests in low cortisol levels over the long-term.
“These effects are greatest for women who reported elevated levels of post-traumatic stress symptoms for two years after the tsunami,” said Elizabeth Frankenberg who, with Duncan Thomas and Cecep Sumantri, leads a long-term survey project, the Study of the Tsunami Aftermath and Recovery (STAR).
They and their colleagues have been studying survivors of the Indonesian tsunami who were first interviewed before the tsunami. For this research, they collected hair samples from adults 14 years after the tsunami.
Read more at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Image: WikiImages via Pixabay
