Gulf War Illness-related Medical Research & Publications

Gulf War Illness-related Medical Research & Publications

Other Health Outcomes

National Institutes of Health Technology Assessment Workshop Panel. The Persian Gulf Experience and Health. JAMA. 1994; 272: 391-395. Summary of conclusions of a 1.5 day workshop. Panel addressed the following issues: 1. Evidence for an increased incidence of unexpected illnesses attributable to service in the Persian Gulf War; 2. A working case definition; 3. Plausible etiologies and biological explanations for unexpected illnesses; 4. Necessary future research.

Campion, E.W. Disease and Suspicion After the Persian Gulf War (editorial). New Eng J Med 1996; 335: 1525-1527. This editorial comments on the studies on mortality (Kang et al.) and hospitalization (Gray et al.) which appeared in the same issue of the journal. The author mentions the many, publicized factors which have been suggested as causes of veterans' symptoms and the distrust that many veterans have of the government. He emphasizes the need for careful, epidemiologic studies, and he cautions that physicians caring for ailing veterans must resist the pressure to diagnose a disease for which scientific evidence is lacking, must win veterans' trust by conducting careful, unbiased, and thorough evaluations, and must keep their allegiance to their patients, not to any third party or unfounded hypothesis.

Joseph, S.C. et al. A Comprehensive Clinical Evaluation of 20,000 Persian Gulf War Veterans. Military Medicine 1997; 162: 149-155.This report summarizes the methodology of the DoD program for medically evaluating Gulf War veterans and presents some of the findings of the first 20,000 evaluations accomplished. The authors' discussion covers the implications of the observations and describes the limitations of the findings. The list of references is an invaluable resource for further reading on illnesses among Gulf War veterans and related topics.

Roy, M.J. et al. Signs, Symptoms, and Ill-Defined Conditions in Persian Gulf War Veterans: Findings from the Comprehensive Clinical Evaluation Program. Psychosomatic Medicine 60: 663-668, 1998. The authors examine CCEP diagnoses of "Signs, Symptoms, and Ill-Defined Conditions" (SSID) that were found in 41.8% of 21,579 veterans evaluated through January 7, 1997. The three most common symptom diagnoses were fatigue, headache, and memory loss. As the depth of the CCEP evaluation increased, the proportion of diagnoses that were SSID decreased but the proportion of psychological diagnoses increased. Limitations of the study and of the CCEP database are

National Institutes of Health Technology Assessment Workshop Panel. The Persian Gulf Experience and Health. JAMA. 1994; 272: 391-395. Summary of conclusions of a 1.5 day workshop. Panel addressed the following issues: 1. Evidence for an increased incidence of unexpected illnesses attributable to service in the Persian Gulf War; 2. A working case definition; 3. Plausible etiologies and biological explanations for unexpected illnesses; 4. Necessary future research.