Cortisol exposure can alter gene activity, including genes related to collagen formation, which may be linked to accelerated aging and PTSD.

“so interestingly the majority of the genes that we found there were genes that have been addressed in the literature as potentially being related to post trumatic stress disorder things like the glucocorticoid receptor genes and things that you would think of but there was another subset of genes that we identify that were novel and I was very interested in those because of my interest in accelerated aging because of stress and those were genes that are related to collagen formation and we know that atherosclerosis has been related to stress for example”