Detection of Salivary Bacteria, Diagnosis of Post-traumatic Sequelae

The study's findings show a typical microbial profile in the saliva of veterans who have experienced combat stress-related responses (from the first Lebanon war) and are currently suffering from post-traumatic distres.

According to the researchers, these results may help in the future for accurate, objective diagnosis of post-traumatic patients and the development of microbe-related drugs (related to the body's microbial ecology.

The research was published in the journal Nature Molecular Psychiatr.

This research is a joint effort of distinguished scholars in various field.

The researchers tested about 200 Israeli veterans who fought in the first Lebanon war in 1982. The test covers a variety of psychological aspects, including sleep, appetite disorders, guilt, suicidal thoughts, social and spousal support, hostility, life satisfaction, as well as demographics, psychopathology, welfare, health and educatio.

Researchers at Tel Aviv University and the University of Haifa compared the subjects' microbiome profile results with psychological outcomes and their responses to welfare questionnaires and found that people with PTSD and high psychopathological symptoms showed the same bacteria in their saliv.

Professor Illana Gozes: "To our knowledge, this is the first time a microbial signature has been found in the saliva of veteranswith PTS.

It must be emphasized that, so far, posttraumatic diagnosis has been based solely on psychological and psychiatric measure.

Ella Levert-Levitt, Guy Shapira, Shlomo Sragovich, Noam Shomron, Jacqueline CK Lam, Victor OK Li, Markus .