Section 1

Introduction and Charge to the Committee

In late 2016, U.S. Embassy personnel in Havana, Cuba, began to report the development of an unusual set of symptoms and clinical signs. For some of these patients, their case began with the sudden onset of a loud noise, perceived to have directional features, and accompanied by pain in one or both ears or across a broad region of the head, and in some cases, a sensation of head pressure or vibration, dizziness, followed in some cases by tinnitus, visual problems, vertigo, and cognitive difficulties. Other personnel attached to the U.S. Consulate in Guangzhou, China, reported similar symptoms and signs to varying degrees, beginning in the following year. As of June 2020, many of these personnel continue to suffer from these and/or other health problems. Multiple hypotheses and mechanisms have been proposed to explain these clinical cases, but evidence has been lacking, no hypothesis has been proven, and the circumstances remain unclear.

The Department of State (DOS), as part of its effort to inform government employees more effectively about health risks at posts abroad, ascertain potential causes of the illnesses, and determine best medical practices for screening, prevention, and treatment for both short and long-term health problems, asked the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (the National Academies) to provide independent, expert guidance.

The task of the Standing Committee to Advise the Department of State on Unexplained Health Effects on U.S. Government Employees and Their Families at Overseas Embassies, detailed in Box 1, included provision of advice to DOS on best practices in their approach to current patients and prevention or mitigation of potential future incidents. The committee’s task was not to “solve” the mystery surrounding what caused the symptoms experienced by personnel in Cuba and China, but it did include the evaluation of proposed plausible mechanisms. Given the limited time available to the committee and the unavailability of relevant, detailed information about individual patients, the committee was not able to accomplish everything in the broad Statement of Task; however, it was able to address a number of critical issues.

The committee faced several challenges in assessing these clinical cases. Many of these challenges relate to the extreme variability in the cases. First, because of federal rules for protection of health and other information, the committee was not privy to health or other personal information about individuals, other than that which was voluntarily provided to the committee directly by a small number of affected DOS employees. Therefore, the committee could not link anonymized data about specific individuals from different clinical providers or clinical investigators. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is the only U.S. federal agency with the authority to link health data from different sources about individual patients, and CDC did in fact undertake an investigation of these cases with the goal of establishing a case definition; however, CDC did not become involved until one year after the earliest events and only reviewed records rather than interviewing all of the affected individuals. The committee was not afforded access to CDC’s final report of this investigation until near the end of the committee’s term. Thus, the committee was blind to the different clinical tools and assessments used by different clinical providers or clinical investigators on the same patient.

A second challenge was that cases evolved over time and patients were evaluated by different clinicians and investigators after widely varying amounts of time following the onset of

their symptoms and signs, including up to several years later. Thus, the evolving and changing clinical features of these cases and the non-uniform timing of the clinical investigations created a second source of variability. Third, the patient population was highly heterogeneous in the timing and location of their overseas assignments; their roles and assignments while overseas; their ages, past medical and career histories and other demographic features; and in their clinical symptoms and signs. In general, the committee did not have access to individual-level information except for several instances where affected DOS employees agreed to tell their story before the committee. Furthermore, when viewed on their own, a number of these clinical signs and symptoms are nonspecific, i.e., they might be experienced by persons suffering from a variety of conditions. Despite these challenges, the committee did its best to collect, extract, and evaluate some shared or distinctive clinical features of these cases, evaluate some plausible mechanisms and efforts to treat some of the patients, and then offer recommendations for future management of these and potential new cases.

This report is organized into five subsequent sections:

• Section 2: Methods and Data
• Section 3: Clinical Features
• Section 4: Plausible Mechanisms
  • Directed Radio Frequency Energy
  • Chemicals
  • Infectious Agents
  • Psychological and Social Factors
• Section 5: Acute Treatment and Rehabilitation
• Section 6: Looking to the Future/Recommendations

Sections 3-5 are each organized according to Sources of Information; Assessment and Findings; Summary; and References.