All news on this page courtesy of the The Times & Sunday Times Newspapers, London, UK
A MILLION-DOLLAR study to determine whether Gulf War syndrome has affected British soldiers is being undertaken in this country, at the Pentagon's expense. The three-year study, led by two specialists in unexplained syndromes at King's College Medical School, London, will be the first systematic examination of the health of soldiers who served in the Gulf.
Although the Pentagon has spent $92 million (about œ62 million) researching the syndrome in the United States, no epidemiological studies, designed to reveal the pattern of illness, have been done because America has no unified system of medical record-keeping. In this country, the National Health Service provides the body of data required for the research.
A total of 15,000 men and women will be surveyed, including 5,000 who served in the Gulf and 5,000 who served in other foreign countries such as Bosnia. The remainder will be controls. An advertisement for a co-ordinator to run the research appears in the current issue of the British Medical Journal.The Pentagon has put up the money as part of its commitment to Nato and because it wishes to study the impact of the syndrome on the forces of the coalition that drove the Iraqi forces out of Kuwait.
The Medical Research Council is meanwhile to announce a œ1.5 million grant from the Ministry of Defence to conduct further research into the syndrome. A spokesman said a call for research proposals would go out in the next two weeks: "We need to establish whether or not there is something tangible here."
More than 700 former British servicemen and women claim they are suffering from illnesses related to the 1991 Gulf War, when they were exposed to the threat of chemical or biological attack. Although it is now accepted that no such attack occurred, the soldiers believe their symptoms were caused by the drugs they were given to counter an attack.
These included immunisations against anthrax, botulism and bubonic plague and daily doses of nerve agent pre-treatment sets, called Naps. Naps contain a drug called pyridostigmine bromide, which is used for the treatment of the neurological condition myasthenia gravis.
The Pentagon-funded study, led by Dr Simon Wessley, an expert in chronic fatigue syndrome, and Dr Tony David, a neuropsychiatrist, will look at whether there is an excess of illness among those who served in the Gulf compared with those who served elsewhere or who stayed at home.
Dr Wessley said: "We know there are soldiers who are ill, but findings of cancer or birth defects are meaningless until you have done a large-scale epidemiological study. We have to see whether there is an excess of illness in the Gulf War group, whether it follows any pattern ð is there more cancer or asthma, or is there a new syndrome? ð and whether it can be linked to anything.
"It will be the definitive study which will establish the patterns of illness in Gulf War veterans. Others can then do more detailed research."
The Gulf Veterans Association said that one in ten of the 51,000 British troops who went to the Gulf had reported illnesses. Larry Cammock, the association's treasurer, said: "These research studies show the whole thing is being looked at seriously for a change, instead of being denied. We hope they are completed as quickly as possible and show the true picture of what is going on instead of covering it up."
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