Brain damage tied to Gulf War illness
By Kelly Kennedy

USA Today

WASHINGTON — Re­searchers say they have found physical proof that Gulf War illness is caused by damage to the brain — and that proof ul­timately might help civil­ians who suffer from chronic fatigue syn­drome and fibromyalgia. Using “functional” MRI machines, the Georgetown University researchers were able to see anomalies in 31 Gulf War veterans in the bun­dle of nerve fibers in the brain that interpret pain signals. The research was published Wednes­day in PLOS ONE jour­nal.

An fMRI is a scan that measures activity by de­tecting how blood flows through the brain. The findings are “huge,” because an fMRI allows doctors to diag­nose a person with Gulf War illness quickly, said James Baraniuk, senior author and professor of medicine at Georgetown University Medical Cen­ter. The research, he said, also shows that Gulf War illness is not psycholog­ical.

Many veterans have had difficulties getting benefits and treatment for a service-connected condition because doc­tors assumed they were either faking it or suffer­ing from post-traumatic stress. “That’s a problem with all physicians — VA, mil­itary or civilian,” Barani­uk said. “If it doesn’t fall within their small world of known diseases, then the patient is nuts.”

Gulf War illness is a series of symptoms that has affected more than 250,000 veterans of the 1991 war against Iraq in response to Iraq’s inva­sion of Kuwait.

Baraniuk said the cor­relation of anomalies in the brain’s white matter with Gulf War illness has not been studied before. Researchers, he said, also found that fatigue and pain worsen congru­ently in the veterans.

John VanMeter, direc­tor of Georgetown’s Cen­ter for functional and mo­lecular imaging, said they looked in particular at the fibers that process pain. “The fibers in the Gulf War veterans have dete­riorated compared to the control,” he said. Those fibers interpret environ­mental pain, but in the case of the veterans, a ti­ny pulse of pressure is in­terpreted as a painful pinch, or normal muscle fatigue from walking a flight of stairs could be interpreted as climbing to the 14th floor. “They get, ‘I’m in pain! I’m in pain! I’m in pain!’ all the time.” The researchers do not know whether the veterans’ symptoms will continue to worsen, though it appears they have from their onset 22 years ago until now. “The guys who were robust and leading the charge on this 10 years ago are now using canes,” Baraniuk said. This research appears to correlate with previ­ous research on Gulf War illness.