Gulf War Veterans Risk Paralyzing Disease

Studies find unusually high incidence of incurable ALS

Washington, DC (Reuters) - Veterans of the 1991 Gulf War may have an unusually high risk of a deadly and incurable nerve disease called ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease, according to two U.S. studies published on Monday.

While ALS is far from common among the veterans, it has appeared more than expected and at younger-than-usual ages, the separate studies found.

One of the studies was done by Dr. Robert Haley, of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas --who has found much if not most of the published medical evidence supporting the idea of Gulf War Syndrome.

A second study by the U.S Department of Veterans Affairs and National Institutes of Health reaches similar conclusions. Both were published in the journal Neurology.

Haley said the finding was significant because it was "only the third real cluster of ALS cases that's ever been documented."

Amytrophic lateral sclerosis, also called ALS or motor neuron disease, attacks nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord, leading to muscle weakness, difficulty speaking, swallowing and breathing, and eventually total paralysis.

It affects about 30,000 Americans, and is named after baseball Hall of Fame member Lou Gehrig, who died of ALS.

About 5 percent of cases are inherited but most are unexplained. But because ALS occurs at about the same rate globally, experts believe there must be a genetic weakness that underlies the disease.

Haley identified 17 Gulf War veterans under 45 who were diagnosed with ALS between 1991 and 1998, 11 of whom have died. None had a family history of ALS or similar diseases.

HIGHER RATE

Haley calculated the expected rate of ALS among this age group and found 1.38 cases of ALS per year would be expected in the Gulf War veteran population in 1998. He found five cases that year.

The VA study found that troops deployed to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey and the Red Sea area had almost twice the risk of ALS as troops who stayed home.

They verified 107 cases of ALS. Of these 40 were from the 696,000 deployed troops and 67 from the nearly 1.8 million not sent overseas.

"This study addressed the question, 'Is there a problem with excessive occurrence of ALS among Gulf War veterans?"' said Ronnie Horner of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, who led the second study. "We found the answer to be yes."

Haley noted the studies involved very small numbers of people and did not mean that most or even many Gulf War veterans need to be worried.

"The best thinking in the ALS research world is that ALS only occurs in people with a rare genetic susceptibility," Haley said in a telephone interview.

"If you have that genetic makeup and you are exposed to many years of environmental toxins of one kind or another --and no one knows what they are -- then you get the ALS. That is why usually only older people get it."

Haley said Sarin gas "appears to be central cause in Gulf War Syndrome," affecting about one of seven Gulf War veterans.

This may shed light on why ALS occurs.

"One of the prime suspects in civilian ALS is organophosphate pesticides. Guess what Sarin is? It is an organophosphate pesticide for humans," he said.

Earlier this year the Institute of Medicine reported that not enough studies have been done to link pesticides or any other chemicals to Gulf War Syndrome, a poorly defined group of illnesses seen in many veterans of the 1991 conflict.