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A COMBINATION of chemicals used to protect soldiers from nerve gas and desert insects during the 1991 war with Iraq could have caused neurological damage, according to new research into the so-called Gulf War syndrome.
Gulf War veterans in Britain said yesterday the American research was the "next step" towards providing conclusive proof of the existence of a war-related syndrome.
The possible explanation for sicknesses suffered by thousands of British and American Gulf War veterans follows research into the effects of a cocktail of chemicals on chickens. The researchers found that although individual doses of the chemicals had no side-effects, even in far larger amounts than those given to soldiers, when administered together they proved highly toxic.
The combination of two pesticides, DEET and permethrin, and the anti-nerve gas agent pyridostigmine bromide, caused neurological problems in the chickens similar to the symptoms found in around 30,000 American Gulf War veterans. The symptoms include memory loss, headaches, fatigue, muscle and joint pain, shortness of breath and tremors. The research by scientists at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, and the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Centre in Dallas, is being presented this week at the Federation of American Societies of Experimental Biology and will be published next month in the Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health.Dr Mohamed Abou-Donia, a pharmacologist at Duke University, said that the chemicals were used to protect the soldiers from diseases such as malaria and leishmaniasis, which could have caused thousands of deaths.
He said, however: "It appears that, for some veterans, the precautions prevented one set of problems and created another. Now our task is to analyse the veterans' symptoms by investigating all the potential causes, not only for their sakes but for the welfare of future soldiers."
Pentagon officials said that they had seen the reports of the new findings but declined to make any comment.
Dr Abou-Donia admitted that the study on chickens did not prove the chemical cocktail affected people. However, his partners at the University of Texas had carried out epidemiological studies on soldiers which were consistent with the animal data, he said. The Texas scientists declined to release their results until the research was published.
The Gulf Veterans' Association in Britain said that the Ministry of Defence had so far failed to carry out specific research and had merely completed a clinical study. A spokeswoman added that the committee of experts brought in to pursue further studies did not include a neurologist.
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