Deployment Health News

Study provides more clues to Gulf War illness

During 2002-2011, among active component U.S. military members, the rates of idiopathic hypothyroidism were 39.7 and 7.8 per 10,000 person-years among females and males, respectively. Unadjusted rates of idiopathic hypothyroidism and chronic thyroiditis (e.g., Hashimoto's disease) were at least twice as high among white, non-Hispanic as black, non-Hispanic service members. However, black, non-Hispanic service members had higher rates of goiter and thyrotoxicosis. Increasing rates of thyroid disorders during the period were accompanied by increases in numbers of screening tests for thyroid function recorded during outpatient visits. 
Study provides more clues to Gulf War illness
Gulf War illness, the series of symptoms ranging from headaches to memory loss to chronic fatigue that plagues one of four veterans of the 1991 Persian Gulf war, is due to damage to the autonomic nervous system, a study released Monday shows. "This is the linchpin," said the study's lead author, Robert Haley, chief of epidemiology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.