Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology believe they may have discovered a way to create a vaccine that could prevent post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), Fox News reports.

"What it's going to do is that they'll still have perfectly strong memories of the event. They just won't have the bad health consequences," said Ki Goosens, an assistant professor of neuroscience with the McGovern Institute for Brain Research.

The key is a lesser-known hormone produced by the stomach called ghrelin.

"The background levels of ghrelin go up if an organism has experienced a period of prolonged stress," Goosens said. "So the more stressed you are, the more ghrelin your stomach will churn out."

"Our work actually suggests that if you knew somebody was going to be potentially exposed to a trauma, then putting them on a drug that could actually block ghrelin might actually lower the incidence of things like post-traumatic stress disorder, or depression."

"We work with veterans returning from the Gulf Wars, or primarily Iraq and Afghanistan," explains Dr. Mireya Nadal-Vicens of the Center for Anxiety and Traumatic Stress Disorders at Massachusetts General Hospital.  "The possibility of giving someone a vaccine and possibly prevent the formation of PTSD."