Government-funded report dismisses idea of Gulf War syndrome
The Associated Press

Published: September 12, 2006



WASHINGTON There is no such thing as Gulf War syndrome, even though U.S. and foreign veterans of the war report more symptoms of illness than do soldiers who did not serve in the Persian Gulf, a federally funded study concludes.

U.S. and foreign veterans of the Gulf War do suffer from an array of very real problems, according to the Veterans Administration-sponsored report released Tuesday.

Yet there is no one complex of symptoms to suggest those veterans — nearly 30 percent of all those who served — suffered or still suffer from a single identifiable syndrome.

"There's no unique pattern of symptoms. Every pattern identified in Gulf War veterans also seems to exist in other veterans, though it is important to note the symptom rate is higher, and it is a serious issue," said Dr. Lynn Goldman, of Johns Hopkins University, who headed the Institute of Medicine committee that prepared the report.

The Veterans Administration contracted with the institute, part of the National Academy of Sciences, to review scientific studies and probe the issue at the direction of Congress.

Tuesday's report is the latest in the important series, which the Veterans Administration will rely on to determine whether Gulf War veterans are eligible for special disability benefits if they are found to suffer from illnesses that can be linked to their service.

Veterans can now claim those benefits only by making an undiagnosed illness claim, said Steve Robinson, a Gulf War Army veteran and government relations director for Veterans for America.

"They keep saying it over and over, every year. We know that — we know that there is no single thing that made veterans sick. We know this thing is likely a combination of various exposures," Robinson said in pushing for new studies he hopes will find what ails tens of thousands of his fellow vets.

A member of the Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses, also chartered by Congress, called the report the "first step" in cataloging the studies done on veterans of the conflict.

"But the most prevalent problems in Gulf War veterans are the multisymptom illness/Gulf War syndrome-type problems that still affect a sizable proportion of those who served in the war. I am disappointed that the IOM report does little to analyze what these studies collectively tell us about the nature and causes of these conditions," said Lea Steele, a Kansas State University epidemiologist who is the committee's scientific director.

Soldiers who served in the Persian Gulf following the Iraqi invasion of neighboring Kuwait in August 1990 have reported symptoms that include fatigue, memory loss, muscle and joint pain, rashes and difficulty sleeping. But not all suffer from the same array of symptoms, which has complicated efforts to pinpoint their cause, according to the report.

Department of Veterans Affairs spokesman Phil Budahn said it would not comment until it had a chance to study the report. The Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States also was reviewing the study.

Nearly 700,000 U.S. soldiers, along with troops from 34 other countries, took part in the Gulf War. Once in the region, those soldiers were exposed to a wide array of toxins and other potential health hazards, including smoke from hundreds of oil well fires, pesticides, depleted uranium ammunition and possibly the nerve agent sarin, released during the demolition of a munitions dump.

Inadequate screening of soldiers before deployment in the Gulf War, coupled with a lack of environmental monitoring during the conflict, have hindered efforts to determine whether exposure to those contaminants is linked to any illness, the report also notes.

For years, the government denied the mysterious illnesses were linked to the war. It now acknowledges that at least some were due to wartime service. The government is no longer pointing to stress as the likely reason, as some federally funded studies had suggested.

The new report did find evidence of an elevated risk of the rare nerve disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also called Lou Gehrig's disease, among Gulf War veterans. They also face an increased risk of anxiety disorders, depression and substance abuse, it said.

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On the Net:

Institute of Medicine: http://www.iom.edu/

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/...ar_Illness.php

(my guess is that this was posted on the old BT 1--but will repeat if it was--

Variations in Detoxifying Genes Linked to ALS
CHICAGO --- Genetic variations in three enzymes that detoxify insecticides and nerve gas agents as well as metabolize cholesterol-lowering statin drugs may be a risk factor for developing sporadic amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease), and possibly responsible for a reported twofold increased risk of ALS in Gulf War veterans.

These findings, from a study led Teepu Siddique, M.D., and colleagues at Northwestern University, open the door to investigating gene-environment interactions as a cause of ALS and other illnesses and to the development of molecular targets for specific treatments. The study was published in the August 22 online issue (available now) of the journal Neurology.

Siddique is Les Turner ALS Foundation/Herbert C. Wenske Professor, Davee Department of Neurology and Clinical Neurosciences, professor of cell and molecular biology and director of the Neuromuscular Disorders Program at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

ALS is a complex neurodegenerative disorder of the motor neurons that results in muscle weakness, difficulty speaking, swallowing and breathing and eventual total paralysis and death generally within five years.

In 1993 Siddique and collaborators determined that mutations in a gene known as SOD1 account for 20 percent of familial, or inherited, ALS (2 percent of all cases of ALS). However, the cause of sporadic ALS is still unknown.

In earlier research Siddique and other researchers hypothesized that sporadic ALS is modulated by variations in multiple genes interacting with each other and environmental exposures.

The genes for human paraoxanases (PON 1, PON 2 and PON 3), which are located on chromosome 7q21.3, code for the production of detoxifying enzymes involved in the metabolism of a variety of drugs, organophosphate insecticides, such as parathion, diazinon and chlorpyrifos, and nerve gas agents such as sarin.

Previous research described a possible twofold increased risk for developing ALS in veterans of the Gulf War, indicating a war-related environmental exposure to organophosphates and sarin in genetically susceptible individuals as a possible cause.

PON gene cluster variants have previously been associated with other neurodegenerative and vascular disorders, including Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, coronary artery disease and stroke.

Although the Northwestern DNA study samples were not analyzed for inclusion of Gulf War veterans, Siddique and co-researchers found significant evidence that gene variations (polymorphisms) on the chromosome region encompassing PON2-PON3 were strongly associated with sporadic ALS.

“Thus, single nucleotide polymorphism genotyping in the intergenic regions of the PON gene cluster, and replication, gene expression, gene-gene interaction and PON serum/enzymatic studies may help elucidate the complexity of PON cluster association with ALS,” Siddique said.

Siddique hopes to study DNA samples from Gulf War veterans with increased incidence of sporadic ALS and has applied for their DNA from the Veterans Administration collection.

Collaborating with Siddique on this research were Mohammad Saeed, M.D.; Nailah Siddique; Wu-Yen Hung; Elena Usacheva; Erdong Liu, M.D.; Robert L. Sufit, M.D.; Scott L. Heller, M.D., Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine; Jonathan L. Haines, Vanderbilt University Medical Center; and Margaret Pericak-Vance, Duke University Medical Center.

This study was supported by grants from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke; Les Turner ALS Foundation; V. E. Schaff ALS Research Trust; Wenske Foundation; Harold Post Professorship; Les Turner ALS Foundation/Herbert C. Wenske Foundation Professorship; Falk Foundation Fund; and The David C. Asselin M.D., Memorial Fund.

http://www.northwestern.edu/newscent...raoxanase.html