Dysregulation of the Stress Response in the Persian Gulf Syndrome
Abstract
Approximately 20% of Gulf War veterans who have presented to DoD and VA health registries have unexplained symptom-based illnesses that have been termed the Persian Gulf Syndrome or Gulf War Illnesses (GWI). Similar syndromes (fibromyalgia (FMS), chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), etc.) are also known to occur at a high rate in the general population. Collectively, we refer to these syndromes as chronic multisymptom illnesses (CMI). CMI are typically initiated and perpetuated by a variety of physical and emotional stressors. Studies of CMI have shown that there are a number of objective neurohumoral abnormalities in the human "stress response" which may be responsible for the symptoms seen in these entities. This study was designed to demonstrate that individuals with GWI: I) display centrally mediated disturbances in autonomic tone, leading to smooth muscle dysmotility, and symptoms such as irritable bowel syndrome, 2) display diffuse disturbances in nociception (pain threshold) that are partly responsible for many of the pain-related symptoms seen in GWI, and 3) display the same blunting of the hypothalamic- pituitary axes seen in some CMI, and contributes to the observed fatigue. We have extensively studied these three different stress responses in a total of 125 subjects in this project (25 GWI, 49 healthy normal controls, and 51 with CMI). Currently our data demonstrate that this cohort of GWI subjects shows evidence of peripheral nociceptive abnormalities, as well as smooth muscle dysmotility (similar process that may underly CMI).
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Nov 01, 1999
- Accession Number
- ADA390441
Entities
People
- Daniel Clauw
Organizations
- Georgetown University