CONTRIBUTION OF EMOTIONALLY TRAUMATIC EVENTS AND INHERITANCE TO THE REPORT OF CURRENT PHYSICAL HEALTH-PROBLEMS IN 4042 VIETNAM ERA VETERAN TWIN PAIRS

Objective: To determine the contributions of psychological trauma (exp osure to combat during the Vietnam War), genetic factors, childhood ex periences shared by twin siblings, and unmeasured experiences not shar ed by twin siblings to the reporting of current physical health proble ms a mean of 19 years after military service. Methods: In 1987, a nati onal sample of 2224 monozygotic and 1818 dizygotic male veteran member s of the Vietnam Era Twin Registry participated in a survey of health. Genetic modeling was performed on cross-sectional physical health and combat exposure data derived from Registry twins. Results: Combat exp eriences explained a small proportion (0.7-8.4%) of the variance in th e report of hypertension, respiratory conditions, persistent skin cond itions, gastrointestinal disorders, joint disorders, and hearing probl ems. Childhood experiences shared by siblings are not clearly related to any health problem studied. By contrast, genetic factors explain 31 to 54% and noncombat experiences not shared by siblings explain 45 to 66% of the variance in current physical health status. Conclusions: G reater than 90% of the variance in reported current physical health pr oblems in Vietnam era veterans is attributable to inherited factors an d unmeasured environmental experiences not shared by twin siblings. Th e traumatic experience of combat makes only a small contribution to th e report of current physical health problems. These results do not pre clude the possibility that combat influenced the prevalence of illness shortly after military service or that combat may influence the devel opment of illness in the future.