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Gulf War syndrome
Gulf War syndrome (GWS) also known as Gulf War Illness or Chronic Multi-symptom Illness, is a chronic and multi-symptomatic disorder affecting military veterans of both sides of the Gulf War (1990–1991). A wide range of acute and chronic symptoms have been linked to it, including fatigue, muscle pain, cognitive problems, insomnia, rashes and diarrhea. Approximately 250,000 of the 697,000 U.S. veterans who served in the Gulf War have an enduring chronic multi-symptom illness. From 1995 to 2005, the health of combat veterans worsened in comparison with nondeployed veterans, with the onset of more new chronic diseases, functional impairment, repeated clinic visits and hospitalizations, myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome-like illness, post-traumatic stress disorder, and greater persistence of adverse health incidents.
Since 2022, Gulf War syndrome has been primarily linked to exposure to sub-lethal amounts of organophosphate nerve agents, particularly sarin and cyclosarin, released atmospherically during Coalition attacks on Iraqi chemical weapons facilities. Susceptibility was influenced by an allele in the PON1 gene. Exposure to pesticides containing other organophosphates and exposure to pills containing pyridostigmine bromide also referred to as nerve agent pre-treatment sets (NAPS) tablets , used as a pretreatment to protect against nerve agent effects, has been found to be associated with the neurological effects seen in Gulf War syndrome. Other potential causes that have been investigated are mustard gas and emissions from oil well fires, but their relationships to the illness are not as clear. Gulf War illness is not the result of combat or other stressors, and Gulf War veterans have lower rates of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) than veterans of other wars.
The Royal British Legion said research suggested up to 33,000 UK Gulf War veterans could be living with Gulf War illness, with 1,300 claiming a war pension for conditions connected to their service. In 2007 the Royal British Legion produced a comprehensive report entitled Legacy of Suspicion, which made recommendations about necessary research and compensation. The Royal British Legion is still campaigning for the UK government to properly address symptoms experienced by veterans of the Gulf War.
According to a 2013 report by the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, veterans of the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan may also have Gulf War illness, though later findings identified causes that would not have been present in those wars.
According to the Institute of Medicine (IOM), part of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, 250,000 of the 696,842 U.S. servicemen and women in the 1991 Gulf War continue to be affected by chronic multi-symptom illness, which the IOM refers to as Gulf War illness. The IOM found that it continued to affect these veterans 20 years after the war.
It is clear that a significant portion of the soldiers deployed to the Gulf War have experienced troubling constellations of symptoms that are difficult to categorize. Unfortunately, symptoms that cannot be easily quantified are sometimes incorrectly dismissed as insignificant and receive inadequate attention and funding by the medical and scientific establishment. Veterans who continue to suffer from these symptoms deserve the very best that modern science and medicine can offer to speed the development of effective treatments, cures, and—we hope—prevention. Our report suggests a path forward to accomplish this goal, and we believe that through a concerted national effort and rigorous scientific input, answers can be found.
— IOM committee chair Stephen L. Hauser, professor and chair, department of neurology, University of California, San Francisco.
Veterans showed, and still show, medically unexplained symptoms. Many of the biological pathways affected by Gulf War illness are unclear, such as why symptoms are diverse in some and specific in others. A lack of data on veterans' pre-deployment and immediate post-deployment health status and lack of measurement and monitoring of the various substances to which veterans may have been exposed make it difficult to reconstruct what happened to service members during their deployments. The IOM report called for a substantial commitment to improving identification and treatment of multisymptom illness in Gulf War veterans focussing on continued monitoring of Gulf War veterans, improved medical care, examination of genetic differences between symptomatic and asymptomatic groups and studies of environment-gene interactions.
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Gulf War syndrome
Gulf War syndrome (GWS) also known as Gulf War Illness or Chronic Multi-symptom Illness, is a chronic and multi-symptomatic disorder affecting military veterans of both sides of the Gulf War (1990–1991). A wide range of acute and chronic symptoms have been linked to it, including fatigue, muscle pain, cognitive problems, insomnia, rashes and diarrhea. Approximately 250,000 of the 697,000 U.S. veterans who served in the Gulf War have an enduring chronic multi-symptom illness. From 1995 to 2005, the health of combat veterans worsened in comparison with nondeployed veterans, with the onset of more new chronic diseases, functional impairment, repeated clinic visits and hospitalizations, myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome-like illness, post-traumatic stress disorder, and greater persistence of adverse health incidents.
Since 2022, Gulf War syndrome has been primarily linked to exposure to sub-lethal amounts of organophosphate nerve agents, particularly sarin and cyclosarin, released atmospherically during Coalition attacks on Iraqi chemical weapons facilities. Susceptibility was influenced by an allele in the PON1 gene. Exposure to pesticides containing other organophosphates and exposure to pills containing pyridostigmine bromide also referred to as nerve agent pre-treatment sets (NAPS) tablets , used as a pretreatment to protect against nerve agent effects, has been found to be associated with the neurological effects seen in Gulf War syndrome. Other potential causes that have been investigated are mustard gas and emissions from oil well fires, but their relationships to the illness are not as clear. Gulf War illness is not the result of combat or other stressors, and Gulf War veterans have lower rates of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) than veterans of other wars.
The Royal British Legion said research suggested up to 33,000 UK Gulf War veterans could be living with Gulf War illness, with 1,300 claiming a war pension for conditions connected to their service. In 2007 the Royal British Legion produced a comprehensive report entitled Legacy of Suspicion, which made recommendations about necessary research and compensation. The Royal British Legion is still campaigning for the UK government to properly address symptoms experienced by veterans of the Gulf War.
According to a 2013 report by the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, veterans of the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan may also have Gulf War illness, though later findings identified causes that would not have been present in those wars.
According to the Institute of Medicine (IOM), part of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, 250,000 of the 696,842 U.S. servicemen and women in the 1991 Gulf War continue to be affected by chronic multi-symptom illness, which the IOM refers to as Gulf War illness. The IOM found that it continued to affect these veterans 20 years after the war.
It is clear that a significant portion of the soldiers deployed to the Gulf War have experienced troubling constellations of symptoms that are difficult to categorize. Unfortunately, symptoms that cannot be easily quantified are sometimes incorrectly dismissed as insignificant and receive inadequate attention and funding by the medical and scientific establishment. Veterans who continue to suffer from these symptoms deserve the very best that modern science and medicine can offer to speed the development of effective treatments, cures, and—we hope—prevention. Our report suggests a path forward to accomplish this goal, and we believe that through a concerted national effort and rigorous scientific input, answers can be found.
— IOM committee chair Stephen L. Hauser, professor and chair, department of neurology, University of California, San Francisco.
Veterans showed, and still show, medically unexplained symptoms. Many of the biological pathways affected by Gulf War illness are unclear, such as why symptoms are diverse in some and specific in others. A lack of data on veterans' pre-deployment and immediate post-deployment health status and lack of measurement and monitoring of the various substances to which veterans may have been exposed make it difficult to reconstruct what happened to service members during their deployments. The IOM report called for a substantial commitment to improving identification and treatment of multisymptom illness in Gulf War veterans focussing on continued monitoring of Gulf War veterans, improved medical care, examination of genetic differences between symptomatic and asymptomatic groups and studies of environment-gene interactions.
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