A new U.S. government preliminary study shows that veterans of the 1991 Gulf War who have reported various physical complaints have suffered brain shrinkage:
Veterans of the first Gulf War who developed numerous health complaints have areas of the brain that are measurably smaller than those of healthier vets, a new study found.
The results of the U.S. government-funded study are preliminary but provide some of the first hard evidence that veterans from the 1990-1991 conflict are suffering from a real neurological illness, researchers say.
“Right now, for Gulf War veterans, there is a discounting of there being any physical basis for what might be wrong with them. But I think that what is really important about this brain imaging research is that it suggests that we really need to take their symptoms seriously, that there is a clear neurological basis for their complaints,” said study lead researcher Roberta White of Boston University School of Public Health.
Another expert with a long history of research into so-called Gulf War syndrome was more cautious.
“These findings are intriguing, but they do not prove that veterans of the first Gulf War were harmed by wartime chemical exposure,” said Dr. Daniel Clauw, professor of medicine and director of the Chronic Pain and Fatigue Research Center at the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor.
The findings do not go far enough to prove that exposure to chemicals caused mental impairment among the veterans, and may instead reveal a group of individuals whose brain anatomy makes them more likely to suffer health problems when they come into contact with battlefield chemicals.
WebMD offers additional perspective. Some excerpts:
This comes eight months after a government advisory panel acknowledged that U.S. soldiers who served in Iraq and Kuwait in the early 1990s suffer increased rates of many ailments….
…..Robert W. Haley, MD, professor of internal medicine and chief of epidemiology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, says the findings suggest that “there is a loss of brain cells due to a toxic effect of pesticides and nerve gas, which then causes brain volume shrinkage.â€
Haley was not involved with the work, presented here at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Neurology…
…..Last September, experts convened by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) said they could find no evidence of a ‘Gulf War syndrome,’ striking a blow to veterans who maintain that exposures to pesticides, weapons residues, or other chemicals caused a set of symptoms unique to their service in Operation Desert Storm.
But the IOM did affirm that combat veterans are more likely to have many individual ailments, including fatigue, joint pain, memory loss, severe headaches, and respiratory and skin ailments, which interfered with normal daily activities.
The new study included 36 vets of the war. Half returned with five or more of these symptoms, and half had fewer symptoms.
Researchers at Boston University, USA, scanned 36 veterans, half of whom reported more than five symptoms, such as joint pain, fatigue, forgetfulness, headaches, nausea and skin rashes. The other half reported fewer than five symptoms.
Comparison of the brain scans showed that the size of the entire cortex, or grey matter, was on average 5% smaller in those with the worst symptoms, while a part of the brain called the cingulate gyrus was 6% smaller. Those with the worst symptoms also scored between 12 and 15% lower on learning and memory tests.
Roberta White, who described the research at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Neurology in Boston yesterday, said: “We don’t know the cause of these differences in the veterans’ brain volumes, but the hypothesis is that they are related to exposure to hazardous substances during the first Gulf war.”
The scientists intend to scan more veterans and will compare the brain scans of those exposed to different chemicals. During the conflict there was widespread use of organophosphate pesticides, sprayed directly on to the skin, around tents and impregnated into uniforms. Some military personnel were exposed to sarin and similar nerve agents, in particular those around the Khamisiya weapons depot that was bombed by US forces.
Some of the symptoms reported by the veterans are similar to those experienced by survivors of the 1995 sarin attack by the religious sect Aum Shinrikyo on the Tokyo subway, said Dr White.
The Guardian has experts saying it’s hard to precisely chronicle a cause since it has been so many years:
The study was received with caution by Simon Wessley, director of the Centre for Military Health Research at King’s College London. “The time to try to find out exactly what went wrong with Gulf veterans was probably a decade ago. By now so many other things have happened; they are older, many drink, they may be depressed, and all these things can change the size of regions of the brain,” he said.
CROSS SECTION OF ADDITIONAL RELATED LINKS TO GULF WAR VETS HEALTH
Gulf War Syndrome
Wikipedia Gulf War Syndrome
Veterans with Gulf War syndrome have damage in specific, primitive portion of nervous system
Gulf War Syndrome
Study: Gulf War Sydrome Doesn’t Exist
Health of Veterans And Deployed Forces Gulf War
Relationship of psychiatric status to Gulf War veterans’ health problems
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.