Illnesses Among United States Veterans of the Gulf War:

Abstract

Despite numerous studies on veterans of the 1990 to 1991 Gulf War, the fundamental questions of how healthy they are and how their health compares with that of their military peers who were not deployed to the Gulf have not been fully answered. We conducted a health survey in which the health outcomes of a population-based sample of 15,000 Gulf veterans representing various military branches and unit components (regular, reserve, National Guard) were compared with those of 15,000 non-Gulf veterans who were randomly sampled to mirror the number in the same military strata in the Gulf veteran group. In comparison with their peers, Gulf veterans had a higher prevalence of functional impairment, health care utilization, symptoms, and medical conditions and a higher rate of low general health perceptions. A longitudinal follow-up of the health of these veterans will be needed to detect changes in health status and to detect diseases with a long latency period.

Exposures to the Kuwait oil fires and their association with asthma and bronchitis among gulf war veterans.

“…There was no evidence of a location bias, and the distribution of exposures among this study population is similar to the distribution of all Gulf War veterans who served during the period when the oil wells were burning. Additionally, there were similar self-reports of exposures between this sample and veterans in the VA National Study of Gulf War veterans (25).…”

Physical activity in postdeployment Operation Iraqi Freedom/Operation Enduring Freedom veterans using Department of Veterans Affairs services

“…In comparison with the general public and veterans not using the VA, veterans using VA services have also been shown to self-report poorer health [4][5][6]; are more likely to be physically inactive [2]; and are more likely to carry one or more chronic diagnoses such as hypertension, hypercholesteremia, and diabetes [2,4,[6][7]. Moreover, U.S. veterans who have spent time in theater often experience mental illnesses, pain syndromes, and musculoskeletal complaints [8][9][10][11][12]. These represent independent risk factors for sedentary behavior and obesity and are associated with increased morbidity and mortality [13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20].…”

Managing future Gulf War Syndromes: international lessons and new models of care

“…Over 250 million dollars has been spent for this research effort in the US alone and a search of the MEDLINE database produced over 1300 articles related to 1991 Gulf War health. In epidemiological surveys of diverse populations of Gulf War troops, veterans consistently report higher rates of nearly every symptom and symptom-based illness examined compared to nondeployed control groups (The Iowa Persian Gulf Study Group 1996; Haley et al 1997a,b;Fukuda et al 1998;Unwin et al 1999;Kang et al 2000;Cherry et al 2001). However, large-scale epidemiological studies failed to identify an overall increase in hospitalization rates among Gulf War veterans and no consistent increase in specific diseases except for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Gray et al 1996;Horner et al 2003).…”