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Pyridostigmine
Bromide Intake during the Persian Gulf War Is Not Associated with Postwar
Handgrip Strength, March 2000 [pdf format]
Long-term Health
Effects Associated with Sub-clinical Exposures to GB and Mustard, July
18, 1996
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.
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