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SMALL STUDY SHOWS BRAIN SHRINK LINKED TO GULF WAR

SYNDROME -- People suffering from Gulf War Syndrome have

a 5% reduction in brain size, a small study suggests.

 

 

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Brain shrink linked to Gulf War syndrome

NewScientist.com news service
Roxanne Khamsi

People suffering "Gulf War syndrome" have a 5% reduction in brain size, a small study suggests.

The anatomical differences between veterans of the first Gulf War in 1991 who report multiple health problems – such as fatigue, skin rash and nausea – and other healthier colleagues, were revealed during brain scans.

Those with symptoms of the controversially named Gulf War syndrome (GWS) have 5% less cortical brain matter than healthier counterparts. The researchers say that the finding provides hard biological evidence to support claims that some veterans of the war suffered real neurological damage, perhaps as a result of nerve gas or other toxins.

Roberta White of the Boston University School of Public Health in Massachusetts, US, and colleagues studied 18 Gulf War veterans who reported more than five health problems such as joint pain, fatigue, skin rash, headaches and nausea.

The researchers conducted brain scans on these subjects – using magnetic resonance imaging technology – as well as 18 control counterparts, who served in the same war but reported only a few of the symptoms.
Memory loss

The scans revealed that the overall brain cortex of the veterans with GWS was about 5% smaller on average than that of the healthier veterans. The cortex includes the outermost and top layer of the brain, including the grey matter, and controls complex functions such as language.

It also includes a specific part of the brain thought to be involved in memory processing and learning, known as the rostral anterior cingulate gyrus, which was about 6% smaller in the ill veterans, on average.

Subjects were also asked to complete a cognitive test that involved memorising a list of 16 words and recalling those words 20 minutes later. Veterans with GWS performed about 15% worse in the test than the healthier control group.

"I think these findings are really important," says White, who presented the results at the American Academy of Neurology annual meeting in Boston this week.

She says that when you combine these findings with others, such as the greater incidence of brain tumours and movement disorders such as ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) among those deployed in the war, "it's pretty clear that something has happened to central nervous system function and structure of Gulf War veterans and that we're just getting to the point where were finally seeing what these effects were."
Pointing the finger

White's team hopes to review information from the study participants and the government to estimate the level of exposure the subjects might have had to the nerve gas sarin and other toxins. A cocktail of toxins could perhaps have produced GWS, though some experts still debate whether this is a unique illness.

Epidemiologist Robert Haley at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, US, says that the brain differences highlighted by the new study do not explain what could have caused GWS.

"It doesn't point to one cause, but it is compatible with what we know about sarin exposure," says Haley, who was not involved in the study. He notes that researchers saw similar reductions in brain volume in Tokyo commuters exposed to sarin gas released in the subway system in 1995.

Haley, who spearheaded early efforts to understand GWS, notes that previous studies have found other biological differences in the brains of veterans of the 1991 war.
Damaged nerves

Specifically, a technique called magnetic resonance spectroscopy found lower levels of a molecule called N-acetylaspartate (NAA), which indicates healthy nerve function, in the brains of symptomatic Gulf War veterans. All this, he says, adds further weight to the argument that GWS is a real illness.

White acknowledges that her new study does not prove that the reduced brain volume was caused by exposure to chemicals in the war. "This could be a pre-existing vulnerability or an exposure-outcome relationship," she says.

But Haley notes that the veterans did not show cognitive abnormalities before entering the war. "They weren't a bunch of people with faulty memory," he explains, since they had to pass certain standard military tests.

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Larry Scott  --