Washington, D.C. -- The government's largest study of the health of Gulf War veterans and their family members has entered its final phase, moving from surveys and record reviews to physical examinations and clinical testing.
Participating veterans will be examined at one of 16 Veterans Affairs (VA) medical centers around the country. The spouse and children of the selected veterans will be invited to see VA physicians or physicians at affiliated medical schools. The exams phase of the study is expected to be completed in about 18 months, to be followed by data analysis and publication of results from all phases of the study.
The VA National Health Survey of Gulf Veterans and their Families previously gathered questionnaire data from 15,000 veterans who served in the Gulf during the period of hostilities. Another 15,000 veterans who did not serve in the Gulf were included in the survey effort as controls. This will provide a comparison group to help distinguish how the Gulf conflict veterans' health might differ from those who were not in the conflict.
A subgroup of 1,000 from each of the two groups was randomly selected for the physical examinations coordinated through the VA Office of Research and Development's Cooperative Studies Program.
"The National Health Survey is an important part of VA's commitment to working toward answers for Gulf War veterans," said Dr. Thomas L. Garthwaite, Acting VA Under Secretary for Health. "Gulf War veterans rightfully are demanding to know if they are at a higher risk than other veterans for a variety of symptoms and illnesses, and they want the best information possible about what this means for the health of their families."
"The National Survey is an important component of the overall federal research program involving more than 120 research projects valued at about $115 million," said Dr. John R. Feussner, VA chief research and development officer and chairperson of the Research Working Group of the Persian Gulf Veterans Coordinating Board.
Through the National Health Survey, veterans and their family members will be examined under a uniform, comprehensive clinical examination protocol in use at the 16 examination sites. Pediatricians examining the children of veterans will gather data enabling a comparison of child health not only among the Gulf War theater veterans and control cohorts, but also between children in the same family born before the Gulf deployment compared to those born after the conflict.
The primary investigators of the overall VA National Health Survey are Han Kang, DPH, director of VA's Environmental Epidemiology Service, Dr. Frances Murphy, director of the VA Environmental Agents Service, and Dr. Seth Eisen of the St. Louis VA Medical Center. Data management and analysis, as well as overall study coordination, are being carried out by VA's CooperativeStudiesCenter in Hines, Ill., directed by Dr. William Henderson.
The VA study builds upon earlier studies of Gulf War veterans' health that have added to medical understanding of Gulf War veterans' illnesses.
For example, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently published an epidemiological study that found multiple symptoms were more prevalent in the Gulf War veterans when 1,155 Air Force Gulf War veterans were compared with 2,520 controls who served elsewhere.
While 39 percent of Air Force Gulf War veterans who were still on duty and studied by CDC suffered from chronic problems with fatigue, mood and thinking, and muscle aches and pains, this was also reported by 15 percent of the non-Gulf group. Ill Gulf War veterans also reported problems in completing their routine daily activities and reported a lower quality of life. No clinically significant physical examination finding or routine laboratory test abnormalities were associated with the mild or severe chronic symptoms in the CDC study. The CDC study found no association between infectious diseases and illness in Gulf War veterans.
The larger sample size in the VA study will have more power to detect subtle physical examination findings or laboratory abnormalities. For any elevated rates of illnesses that are not rare conditions in the U.S. population in general, the study will provide strong evidence on the health consequences associated with military service in Operations Desert Shield or Desert Storm.
So that results of the study can be generalized to the larger group of ill Gulf War veterans, it is important that subject selection be random. Thus, volunteers are not being recruited for the study. The random selection of both the study group and controls is critically important in this kind of population-based epidemiologic study for results to be representative of the larger group sampled.
However, VA does encourage veterans with health concerns about their experience in the Gulf to take advantage of a free health screening examination under the Gulf War Registry Program if they have not already done so, or if their health has changed since an initial registry exam. Interested veterans should contact their local VA medical center for a registry exam appointment. They may call 1-800-749-8387 for assistance in finding their nearest medical center or for general information on Gulf-related topics, including VA's free medical treatment programs for any conditions that could possibly be related to Gulf War service.
