Olfactory functioning in Gulf War-era veterans: Relationships to war-zone duty, self-reported hazards exposures, and psychological distress

Abstract

To explore possible neurotoxic sequelae of Gulf War (GW) participation, olfactory identification performance, neurocognitive functioning, health perceptions, and emotional distress were assessed in 72 veterans deployed to the GW and 33 military personnel activated during the GW but not deployed to the war zone. Findings revealed that war-zone-exposed veterans reported more concerns about health, cognitive functioning, and depression than did their counterparts who did not see war-zone duty. There was no evidence that performances on olfactory or neurocognitive measures were related to war-zone duty or to self-reported exposure to GW toxicants. However, symptoms of emotional distress were positively correlated with self-report of health and cognitive complaints. Results do not provide support for the hypothesis that objectively-measured sensory (i.e., olfactory) or cognitive deficits are related to war-zone participation but do underscore the increasingly demonstrated association between self-reported health concerns and symptoms of emotional distress.

Burning odor-elicited anxiety in OEF/OIF combat veterans: Inverse relationship to gray matter volume in olfactory cortex

“…To our knowledge, only one study assessed olfactory-related brain volume and reported reduced olfactory bulb volume in women with a history of childhood maltreatment (Croy et al, 2013). Other studies designed to assess clinical olfactory function in PTSD have been inconsistent (Croy et al, 2010, Dileo et al, 2008, Vasterling et al, 2000, Vasterling et al, 2003). However, recent preliminary data from our laboratory suggest that trauma-exposed combat veterans with and without PTSD may have a decreased ability to detect odors (Cortese et al, 2014), in addition to a self-reported reduction in general odor sensitivity (Cortese et al, 2015).…”

Neuropsychological Changes Following Military Service in Iraq

“…As a result, a series of neuropsychological studies of Gulf War veterans was undertaken some considerable time after deployment. [8][9][10] A review 11 of the results of these studies did not find a consistent pattern of significant deficits, and although certain subgroups (those who reported multiple symptoms and those who selfreported greater exposure to pesticides) had more deficits, again, there was no consistent pattern. Instead, the authors of the review concluded that these deficits were only mild and that "performance on objective tasks of neuropsychological function showed little correspondence to subjective perceptions of cognitive functioning."…”

An assessment of survey measures used across key epidemiologic studies of United States Gulf War I Era Veterans

“…Similar question phrasing was used for National Health Survey, Iowa, and the VA Registry [38,48,136] and furthermore, National Health Survey and Iowa used the same three-point scale to describe the length of exposure [38,136]. Devens and a New Orleans subset also used identical tools to evaluate exposures [3,25,45]. Additional exposure information was gathered in three studies.…”

“…The most common of these were alcohol and tobacco use. Alcohol use was primarily evaluated using self-constructed questions about current drinking status, alcohol abuse, and number of drinks consumed [2,4,10,12,13,17,25,35,45,51,195,196]. However, Iowa, National Health Survey, and Millennium Cohort used validated instruments.…”

“…Iowa used the CAGE (Cut back, Annoyance, Guilt, Eye-openers) questionnaire [2,197], and both National Health Survey and Millennium Cohor used the alcohol component of the Patient Health Questionnaire [92]. Tobacco use was most commonly queried by asking participants about their smoking status (never, past, or current smoker) [2-4,10,12-14,17,25,35,45,48,139,198]. Additional information obtained varied by study, but included increases or decreases in daily smoking habits [198] and whether participants had smoked at least 100 cigarettes [51,198].…”