Journal of Biosciences and Medicines, 2018, 6, 23-32 http://www.scirp.org/journal/jbm ISSN Online: 2327-509X ISSN Print: 2327-5081 DOI: 10.4236/jbm.2018.62003 Feb. 26, 2018 23 Journal of Biosciences and Medicines Association of Bax and Bcl-2 Functional Polymorphisms and Protein Levels with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Diana Avetyan 1 , Arsen Arakelyan 1,2 , Gohar Mkrtchyan 1* 1 Laboratory of Human Genomics and Immunomics, Institute of Molecular Biology, Armenian National Academy of Sciences, Yerevan, Armenia 2 Group of Bioinformatics, Institute of Molecular Biology, Armenian National Academy of Sciences, Yerevan, Armenia Abstract Background: Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is an anxiety disease in- fluenced by both environmental and genetic factors, which affects a patient’s quality of life and social stability. Recent studies have shown that the patho- genesis of PTSD is associated with apoptosis; however, the molecular me- chanisms that cause such damage are not well-understood. Also it is unclear whether these pathologic alterations are genetically determined or caused by other factors. The aim of this study was to investigate the genetic association of functional polymorphisms in genes coding for apoptosis-related Bcl-2 and Bax proteins with PTSD as well as proteins levels in the blood of affected subjects. Methods: The study groups consisted of 200 combat veterans with PTSD and an equal number of healthy subjects with no family- or past-history of any psychiatric disorders. Bax and Bcl-2 proteins levels in blood were measured by ELISA. DNA samples were genotyped for SNPs using PCR-SSP. Results: According to our results, PTSD patients are characte- rized by increased levels of apoptotic proteins and the imbalance in the Bax/Bcl-2 ratio compared to healthy subjects. Our results also demonstrate that rs956572*A minor allele of the BCL2 gene was overrepresented in pa- tients with PTSD compared to healthy subjects. Conclusions: The results implicate Bcl-2 and Bax in pathogenesis of PTSD on genetic and protein le- vels, though further studies on enlarged cohort and in different populations are required. Keywords Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, Apoptosis, BCL2, BAX, Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms How to cite this paper: Avetyan, D., Ara- kelyan, A. and Mkrtchyan, G. (2018) Associ- ation of Bax and Bcl-2 Functional Polymor- phisms and Protein Levels with Posttrau- matic Stress Disorder. Journal of Biosciences and Medicines, 6, 23-32. https://doi.org/10.4236/jbm.2018.62003 Received: January 18, 2018 Accepted: February 23, 2018 Published: February 26, 2018 Copyright © 2018 by authors and Scientific Research Publishing Inc. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution International License (CC BY 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Open Access