Gulf War and Health Volume 10: Update of Health Effects of Serving in the Gulf War, 2016 (2016) / Chapter Skim
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1 Introduction
1 Introduction
Pages 13-24
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From page 13... ...
During and after the Gulf War, veterans began reporting a variety of health problems, particularly a constellation of symptoms that have been termed Gulf War illness. These symptoms continue to plague as many as one-third of the veterans who were deployed to the Persian Gulf region.
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From page 14... ...
In particular, it focuses on the environment of the Persian Gulf and the many natural and anthropogenic exposures that the Gulf War veterans, primarily U.S. service members, may have experienced.
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. In one survey of deployment experiences, although men and women reported similar exposure to most stressors, women reported more exposure to interpersonal stressors, such as incidents of sexual harassment, and less postdeployment social support.
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From page 16... ...
, however, objective information regarding individual levels of pesticide exposure is generally not available, and reports by individual veterans as to their use of and possible exposure to pesticides are subject to considerable recall bias. Health outcomes associated with exposure to the insecticides used in the Gulf War are discussed in Volume 2 of the Gulf War and Health series (IOM, 2003)
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From page 17... ...
troops arrived in the Persian Gulf region, they had no way of knowing whether they would be exposed to biologic and chemical weapons. Iraq previously had used such weapons in fighting Iran and in attacks on the Kurdish minority in Iraq.
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From page 18... ...
The potential exposures to sarin and cyclosarin from the Khamisiyah incident have been the subject of several modeling and health outcome studies. Depending on the dispersion model used to estimate the sarin and cyclosarin plume and troop unit locations, the number of Gulf War veterans who may have been exposed to the nerve agents ranged from an initial estimate of 10,000 troops within 25 km of Khamisiyah in a 1997 model, to more than 100,000 troops using a 2000 model.
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From page 19... ...
Virtually all surveys of Gulf War veterans, whether taken shortly after the war or years later, indicate that Gulf War veterans, particularly those with Gulf War illness or PTSD, frequently experience decreased physical and mental functioning and reduced quality of life (Hoptof et al., 2003a; Proctor et al., 2001a; Toomey et al., 2007; Voelker et al., 2002) and that these issues have persisted long after the war (Li et al., 2011a; Sim et al., 2015)
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From page 20... ...
In 2006, the committee produced the report Gulf War and Health, Volume 4: Health Effects of Serving in the Gulf War that summarized the overall health effects in veterans and noted which health outcomes were more evident in veterans who had deployed to the Persian Gulf region compared with their nondeployed counterparts, irrespective of the specific exposures experienced by the deployed veterans. The Volume 8 report was an update of Volume 4, covering the literature published between 2006 and 2009 on the health effects seen in deployed and nondeployed veterans.
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From page 21... ...
None of the other health outcomes associated with exposures experienced during deployment to the 1990–1991 Gulf War, as identified in the IOM Gulf War and Health series, are presumed to have service connection at this time, although veterans may still seek to establish service connection individually for diseases and illnesses associated with their service in the Gulf War. CHARGE TO THE COMMITTEE The charge to the Volume 4 and Volume 8 committees and to the current committee is different from charges to other IOM Gulf War and Health committees in that these three committees were not asked to associate health outcomes with specific biologic, chemical, or other agents believed to have been present in the Persian Gulf region, but rather to examine health outcomes related to deployment to the gulf region as a whole.
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From page 22... ...
troops, this and prior committees reviewed studies of Gulf War veterans from Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Kuwait, and the United Kingdom, where available. To be comprehensive in its approach to the epidemiologic literature, the committee defined its body of evidence to include studies reviewed in Volume 8 (which also assessed those studies cited in Volume 4)
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From page 23... ...
Finally, in Chapter 6 the committee summarizes its findings with regard to the health of Gulf War veterans and makes recommendations for future research efforts to help diagnose and treat their many health conditions. Chapter 7 contains all the references cited in the previous chapters.
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