ORIGINAL PAPER
Do Gulf War veterans with high levels of deployment-related exposures display symptoms suggestive of Parkinson’s disease?
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1
University of California, San Francisco, USA
(Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging)
2
University of California, San Francisco, USA
(Department of Psychiatry)
3
San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center, San Francisco, USA (Center for Imaging of Neurodegenerative Diseases)
Online publication date: 2019-07-04
Corresponding author
Linda L. Chao
San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Center for Imaging of Neurodegenerative Diseases, 4150 Clement Street, 114M, San Francisco,
CA 94121, USA
Int J Occup Med Environ Health. 2019;32(4):503-26
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ABSTRACT
Objectives: Veterans of the 1991 Gulf War (GW) were exposed to a myriad of potentially hazardous chemicals during deployment. Epidemiological
data suggest a possible link between chemical exposures and Parkinson’s disease (PD); however, there have been no reliable data on the incidence
or prevalence of PD among GW veterans to date. This study included the following 2 questions: 1. Do deployed GW veterans display PD-like symptoms?
and 2. Is there a relationship between the occurrence and quantity of PD-like symptoms, and the levels of deployment-related exposures in
GW veterans? Material and Methods: Self-reports of symptoms and exposures to deployment-related chemicals were filled out by 293 GW veterans,
202 of whom had undergone 3 Tesla volumetric measurements of basal ganglia volumes. Correlation analyses were used to examine the relationship
between the frequency of the veterans’ self-reported exposures to deployment-related chemicals, motor and non-motor symptoms of PD, and the total
basal ganglia volumes. Results: Healthy deployed GW veterans self-reported few PD-like non-motor symptoms and no motor symptoms. In contrast,
GW veterans with Gulf War illness (GWI) self-reported more PD-like motor and non-motor symptoms, and more GW-related exposures. Compared
to healthy deployed veterans, those with GWI also had lower total basal ganglia volumes. Conclusions: Although little is known about the long-term
consequences of GWI, findings from this study suggest that veterans with GWI show more symptoms as those seen in PD/prodromal PD, compared
to healthy deployed GW veterans. Int J Occup Med Environ Health. 2019;32(4):503–26