Nature’s Eric Olson interviews Kerry Ressler’s on his research published in Nature 470, February 24, 2011:

Why do some people develop post-traumatic stress disorder, but others emerge from a horrific event relatively unscathed? A molecule involved in orchestrating the brain’s response to stress may hold the key to this difference.

Women are 30 to 50 per cent more likely to develop PTSD than men. (The interview doesn’t address the episodic nature of PTSD. I don’t believe this research tell us anything about an episode’s frequency or intensity–for example, a flashback triggered by a car back fire. Nor does it address the extent with which anxiety episodes are chronic and worsen over time. I have my own personal obsession, I guess would be the word, about whether levels of estrogen and how they change over a woman’s lifetime, impact the intensity of her anxiety or depression.)

During the interview, PTSD is mentioned often by the interviewer, but the researcher, Kerry Ressler, doesn’t seem to differentiate between PTSD, panic and generalized anxiety disorders, as well as depression. The biological factors (the protein: Pituitary adenylate cyclase-activating polypeptide (PACAP), and its modulation by estrogen) impact fear inhibitors and stress responses independent of which anxiety disorder is being discussed. But it does appear that research was conducted on “heavily traumatized subjects,” rats, mice? Why? Because the symptoms were easier to induce and observe? Because the name PTSD is more eye-catching in headlines and grant applications?

Fast forward to minute 6:38 of the podcast:

Related transcript.
Research article abstract.

Dr. Ressler:

I don’t necessarily think that the symptoms at the final common pathway of symptoms level, there is necessarily a difference between men and women, but what we are increasingly learning about complex brain disorders is that there is probably many different ways to get to that disorder.