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Review
. 2025 May 12:6:1536169.
doi: 10.3389/fgwh.2025.1536169. eCollection 2025.

Intimate partner violence and stress-related disorders: from epigenomics to resilience

Anna Carannante  1 , Marco Giustini  1 , Federica Rota  2 , Paolo Bailo  3 , Andrea Piccinini  4   5 , Gabriella Izzo  6 , Valentina Bollati  2   7 , Simona Gaudi  1
Affiliations
Review

Intimate partner violence and stress-related disorders: from epigenomics to resilience

Anna Carannante et al. Front Glob Womens Health. .

Abstract

Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) is a major public health problem to be addressed with innovative and interconnecting strategies for ensuring the psychophysical health of the surviving woman. According to the World Health Organization, 27% of women worldwide have experienced physical and sexual IPV in their lifetime. Most of the studies on gender-based violence focus on short-term effects, while long-term effects are often marginally included even though they represent the most serious and complex consequences. The molecular mechanisms underlying stress-related disorders in IPV victims are multiple and include dysregulation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, inflammatory response, epigenetic modifications, neurotransmitter imbalances, structural changes in the brain, and oxidative stress. This review aims to explore the long-term health consequences of intimate partner violence (IPV), emphasizing the biological and psychological mechanisms underlying stress-related disorders and resilience. By integrating findings from epigenetics, microbiome research, and artificial intelligence (AI)-based data analysis, we highlight novel strategies for mitigating IPV-related trauma and improving recovery pathways. Genome-wide environment interaction studies, enhanced by AI-assisted data analysis, offer a promising public health approach for identifying factors that contribute to stress-related disorders and those that promote resilience, thus guiding more effective prevention and intervention strategies.

Keywords: epigenetics; intimate partner violence; microbiome; resilience; stress-related disorders; vesicles.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
The long-term consequences of violence (modified from vecteezy.com).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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