Repeated episodes of violence cause behavioral and neuronal alterations in women

25.09.2024

An international research team led by the University of Padua has demonstrated how repeated episodes of violence cause behavioral and neuronal alterations on the female body and are capable of damaging the female brain, causing an alteration of the functionality in some regions of the brain.
Researchers using animal models, demonstrate a deterioration of the hippocampus, an area crucially involved in cognitive processes such as memory, learning new information and navigation mechanisms, as well as in the regulation of mood and emotions.

These finding are what emerged from a preclinical study coordinated by the University of Padua, in collaboration with the Johns Hopkins University of Baltimore and other prestigious national and international institutions within the framework of the European project PINK (Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions), published in the journal iSCIENCE.

Prof Jacopo Agrimi of the Department of Biomedical Sciences of the University of Padua and first author of the research, “The study showed that, following violent and repeated attacks, the female body shows a drastic reduction in the formation of new neuronal cells in the hippocampus, and possibly in other areas of the brain, accompanied by an increase in the death of neuronal cells. The work of colleagues also showed that experimental subjects subjected to psychological and physical violence develop anxious-depressive behaviors over time, which is associated with a drastic reduction in one of the subtypes of estrogen receptors, the so-called beta receptors.

To date, few experimental studies have addressed the problem of what the structural consequences of repeated physical and psychological violence exercised for example by a violent partner on the female central nervous system may be. In fact, in many experimental models the impact of stress imposed by a male on another male has been evaluated, but violence imposed by a male on a female would seem to have different and much more profound consequences. The study Reiterated male-to-female violence disrupts hippocampal estrogen receptor ß expression propting anxiety-like-behavior examined for the first time the repercussions in specific areas of the female brain that can emanate from a violent and prolonged male-female interaction, and the possible breakdown of physiological protective mechanisms that safeguard the maintenance and therefore the functionality of its cells.

Given our current lack of understanding of the structural and functional repercussions that domestic violence could have on the brain, and other organs, of women, this study sheds new light and therefore new perspectives on the consequences and therefore the prevention and treatment of this horrible form of violence whose incidence is growing day by day.

A new perspective, also in therapeutic function and as a further foundation of the research carried out at the University of Padua, is that which comes from the United States where the use of substances stimulating the beta receptors of estrogens has been approved to treat mood disorders in women at the beginning of menopause.

In the wake of this research, Gaya Spolverato, professor of the Department of Surgical, Oncological and Gastroenterological Sciences and delegate for Equal Opportunity Policies of the University (as well as co-author of the study), has started a new line of experimental research focused on the mechanisms that could link repeated domestic violence to a higher incidence of some forms of cancer.