Nursing Student Class Projects (Formerly MSN)
Academic Term
Summer 7-31-2020
Document Type
Paper
Course Number
NURS 6810
Course Name
Advanced Pathophysiology for the Advanced Practice Nurse
Professor’s Name
Dr. John Chovan & Dr. Sue Butz
Keywords
Keywords: trauma-informed care, adverse childhood experiences, epigenetics
Subject Categories
Medicine and Health Sciences | Nursing
Abstract
Epigenetics plays a vital role in one’s health and behavior starting in utero and lasting until death. We look at why epigenetics is important and the mechanisms in which epigenetics works on one’s DNA. We will also see several of the disease processes in which we have research linking their causation directly to an epigenetic influence. The topic of epigenetics is quite large and growing and hence we have not sought to provide an exhaustive picture of the current research that is available. We feel the most important piece of this work is being able to connect the original study of Felitti et al. (1998) in Adverse Childhood Trauma with the health and behavior consequences we find later in life directly to an epigenetic mechanism. The medical field must start to take adverse childhood trauma seriously. We now know it directly affects one’s health and behavior, due to the epigenetic modifications, with a great monetary cost associated to it as found by Miller et al. (2020) not to mention the death they face due to these health and behavior modifications if the medical field does not step in and start providing for resilience.
Recommended Citation
Seivers, Peter, "Epigenetic Effects on Health and Behavior" (2020). Nursing Student Class Projects (Formerly MSN). 422.
https://digitalcommons.otterbein.edu/stu_msn/422