Biomarkers of stress resilience. A review

The complex dyadic interaction of stress and resilience has received growing attention as a promising avenue for informing new diagnostic and prognostic models for human health. In this review, we present a selection of some of the most relevant data on translational models and biomarkers of stress and resilience in the field of mental health. Several critical aspects concerning the preclinical and clinical model development are addressed. The distance between preclinical and clinical disease models has widened with time across all fields of medicine, with psychiatry presenting additional hurdles represented by the inherent heterogeneity of the studied phenotypes. Capitalizing on technological advances in developing and consolidating sound theories for stress-resilience interaction models represents a promising avenue, possibly endowed with greater ecological validity compared to the sole socio-psychological assessment. Instrumental in advancing the field will be an increased level of integration between preclinical and clinical researchers’ efforts in developing translational biomarkers, aiming to elucidate better the interindividual heterogeneity in the impact of stress exposure on individuals’ health and behavior.