Violence in Syria causing change to DNA of survivors

Violence as far back as the 1980s in Syria may have caused change to the DNA of future generations, researchers have found, the Middle East Eye reported on March 7th.

University of Florida anthropology and genetics professor Connie J Mulligan united with Syrian, Jordanian, and western researchers to conclude thee findings. In short, buried in the DNA of the grandchildren of woman survivors from the 1982 Hama massacre exists traces of their grandmother’s hardships.

It was former Syrian president Hafez al-Assad loyalist government forces who launched the brutal Hama massacre, killing tens of thousands of people.

This is the first human evidence of a transmission of grief through genes. Previously similar results were only found in animals. The study spotlights how an individual’s environment and behaviour can cause changes in the function of their genes. Known as, epigenetics.

Samples were gathered from pregnant Syrian grandmothers and mothers in Jordan who experienced violence during the Hama massacre or the violence that started with the Syrian civil war in 2011. A control group of families who moved to Jordan before 1980 was used to verify the results.

For those exposed to violence while still within the mothers’ wombs displayed signs of biological aging that is often associated with age-related diseases. Despite this, how these epigenetic changes affect people’s daily lives remains vague.

Mulligan says, “we think our work is relevant to many forms of violence, not just refugees”. Hammering home the researchers belief that their discovery should be considered as a momentous understanding for long-term exposure to violence. Mulligan adds, “it could even help explain some of the seemingly unbreakable intergenerational cycles of abuse and poverty and trauma”.

With the violence that has engulfed Syria since 2011 from Bashar Assad, to his fall in late 2024, the inevitable reflection to the tens of thousands yet to be born should be food for thought on the role of systemic violence in the world today.

Mulligan explains: “the idea that trauma and violence can have repercussions into future generations should help people be more empathetic, help policymakers pay more attention to the problem of violence”.

Middle East Eye