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About the Children's Environmental Health InitiativeResearchers Probe Geographical Ties to ALS Cases Among 1991 Gulf War Veterans -- July 22, 2008 Researchers from Duke University, the University of Cincinnati (UC) and the Durham Veterans Administration Medical Center are hoping to find a geographical pattern to help explain why 1991 Gulf War veterans contracted the fatal neurological disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) at twice the normal rate during the decade after the conflict. Also known as Lou Gehrig's Disease because it crippled and ultimately killed that baseball great in 1941, ALS causes cellular degeneration in the central nervous system. Its cause is unknown. The study, Spatial Analysis of the Etiology of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis among 1991 Gulf War Veterans was published online on July 18, 2008 by the research journal NeuroToxicology. The work was funded by the Department of Veterans Affairs Cooperative Studies Program. Dr. Marie Lynn Miranda, Director of the Children's Environmental Health Initiative, is the first author of the analysis. The cases of ALS assessed by Miranda and her colleagues occurred within a group of people who are expected to be at low risk for ALS, because they're mostly under the age of 45. There are no reports on the occurrence of ALS among veterans of other conflicts. In a one-year period of military operations, some deployed military personnel experienced numerous exposures to multiple, potentially neurotoxic agents. To narrow down the possibilities of candidate environmental exposures, Miranda and fellow investigators used GIS analysis, which allows researchers to layer different kinds of information onto maps to deduce potential risks. The researchers began by searching Department of Veterans Affairs and Department of Defense records as well as other sources to identify military personnel diagnosed with ALS after 1991. Department of Defense data also allowed the researchers to identify the military units these veterans with ALS served in during their period of deployment to the Persian Gulf region. In a separate analysis, troop units known to have been exposed to emissions from a munitions storage area at Khamisiyah, Iraq were identified. Those munitions were destroyed by U.S. forces in March 1991, and a United Nations commission later found many rockets there had been loaded for chemical warfare. A previous Defense Department modeling study deduced that some 90,000 veterans may have been exposed to low levels of nerve agent at Khamisiyah. By layering military records of troop locations onto Gulf-area maps, the researchers found there were some areas of service where there appears to be an elevated risk. However, additional work is needed to determine whether the ALS victims' units were in the area of emissions plumes from Khamisiyah at specific times. Miranda and her colleagues are also interested in examining environmental exposures that may be associated with oil well fire smoke plumes. Other authors of the new NeuroToxicology report include Miranda's Nicholas School colleagues M. Alicia Overstreet Galeano and Eric Tassone as well as Kelli Allen, a research health scientist at the Durham VA Medical Center and a Duke assistant research professor of medicine. In addition, Ronnie Horner, Chair, Department of Public Health Sciences, University of Cincinnati, is the senior author on the paper. The complete study may be accessed here: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neuro.2008.05.005 For more information contact:
Marie Lynn Miranda, CEHI, (919) 613-8023, mmiranda@duke.edu | ||
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