WOMEN WHO feel more stressed-out than their male colleagues can now justify their complaints. Their genetic make-up leaves them much more sensitive to stress and twice as vulnerable to stress-related illnesses.
Modern living seems to leave us all under the cosh trying to juggle responsibilities at work and at home. Money worries, the threat of unemployment and caring for children can all deliver stress that can lead to illnesses.
But research published yesterday in the Naturejournal, Molecular Psychiatry, indicates that men are more able to deal with stress than women based solely on their genes – or at least this is true for male and female rats.
It shows that females are much more sensitive to stress hormones so if these are about even at low levels, females will feel the pressure. And unlike males, females do not tend to adapt to repeated exposure to stress and remain just as susceptible to the physiological effects no matter how often they are exposed to stressful situations.
It all comes down to a substance called the corticotrophin-releasing factor, explains researchers Dr Rita Valentino and Dr Debra Bangasser of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and colleagues.
This factor is released by the brain and regulates the body’s physiological and behavioural response to stress, the researchers said.
They injected rats with the factor and the female rats responded to doses that were too low to cause any effect in male rats.
They discovered that tissues in the females were much more effective at picking up the factor’s stress signals compared to the males.
The researchers also discovered that the male rats adapted to repeated exposure to the factor. Their cells adjusted to become even less sensitive to the factor, further reducing its effects.
This acclimatisation did not occur in the females because they were missing a gene necessary for this change to take place.
If duplicated in humans, their findings may help to explain why women are twice as likely to suffer the effects of stress-related illnesses such as depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.
It also draws into question the usual practice of using only male rats when studying models of stress-related psychopathology, the researchers suggest.
It may also aid drug discovery in treatments for psychiatric disorders that are more common in women.