Researchers Find Two Distinct Forms of Gulf War Illness

A new study has found that there are two distinct types of the Gulf War Illness, depending on the part of the brain the disease affects the most.

The study was conducted by researchers at Georgetown University Medical Center and explains why veterans afflicted with Gulf War illness show distinctly different set of symptoms.

About one in every three Gulf War Veteran who served in the 1991 war in the Persian Gulf, still experiences chronic fatigue, depression, loss of memory, joint and muscle pain, according to a recent report by the Institute of Medicine.

IOM says that there is no "one size fits all" approach to treat the Gulf war illness and that doctors need to personalize treatments for each veteran. There are about 175,000 to 250,000 veterans with the condition.

The study was based on a group of veterans who were deployed in the Gulf and a group of controls. Researchers found that veterans had an increased level of pain. Their MRI scans showed that veterans also had a loss of brain matter in a region of the brain that regulates pain.

Veterans were also more likely to show an increased use of basal ganglia during exercises that require mental abilities. The use of basal ganglia during cognitive tests is a marker of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease where the brain is trying to compensate for loss of certain regions in the brain. After the tests were over, researchers found that the veterans' brains lost the ability to use basal ganglia, which showed that the brain isn't able to cope with physiological stresses.

Also, another set of ten veterans showed other symptoms of the condition such as elevated heart rates. This group had evidence of atrophy (cell death) in the brain stem, which is associated with heart rate. Mental ability tests showed that this group used cerebellum to compensate for the loss of cognitive function.

 "The use of other brain areas to compensate for a damaged area is seen in other disorders, such as Alzheimer's disease, which is why we believe our data show that these veterans are suffering from central nervous system dysfunction," Rakib Rayhan, from  Georgetown University Medical Center and lead author of the study.

Previous research had shown that Gulf War veterans have abnormalities in the nerve fibers that connect brain areas associated with regulation of pain and fatigue.

These symptoms are a result of years of exposure to pesticides and herbicides that are toxic to human brain. However, nobody has yet found a specific cause of this condition in the Gulf War veterans.

"Our findings help explain and validate what these veterans have long said about their illness," Rayhan said in a news release.

Although the veterans show symptoms that are similar to those seen in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease, their condition won't progress into AD.

The study is published in the journal PLOS One.