Hippocampal Regeneration and Treatment of PTSD and Depressive Patients

After eight of their ververt monkeys had died spontaneously during a four-year period, the staff of the Institute of Primate Research in Kenya developed an opportunistic research project when all their autopsies found multiple gastric ulcers and a high incidence of bite wounds. The ulcers and the bite wounds that came from their dominance struggles in caged group housing – were seen as evidence of significant levels of stress, especially as all but one had bred in the wild and had roamed as agricultural pests before capture and housing in the outdoor cages of the Institute. Six colony-born ververt monkeys, similarly housed, and euthanized as part of an experimental program, formed a convenient comparison group, especially as their autopsies revealed no ulcers and a low level of bite wounds (Uno et al., 1989). Because of the known link between stress and glucocorticoids, the investigators hypothesized that glucocorticoids had played a major part in the development of the ulcerated monkeys.