Redefining Gulf War Illness Using Longitudinal Health Data: The Fort Devens Cohort
Abstract
Shortly after return from Gulf War (GW) deployment in 1991, some GW veterans began reporting a constellation of health symptoms that did not meet criteria for well-defined medical conditions or syndromes. Symptoms included pain, cognitive deficits, skin rash, gastrointestinal difficulties and sleep problems. The initial attempts at identifying case definition used a one-time cross-sectional health symptom report, which is insufficient for determining a case definition given that symptoms often show remitting and relapsing tendencies. Current estimates suggest that 25 percent of GW veterans (nearly 170,000) have reported persisting multisymptom illness and in order to stimulate more appropriate treatment avenues for ill veterans, it is essential that a refined case definition be found taking change over time into account and examining the impact of symptoms previously reported on current health status. This will be accomplished by employing a longitudinal design with a large longitudinally followed cohort. Current health symptom survey data will therefore be compared with prior survey data. The practical application of this study is to provide a gold standard definition to be used in future treatment trials. The study goals include, devising a new case definition for GW illness, where possible assisting in the management of specific disease states, and collecting outcome data about treatment avenues employed and their efficacy. Year 1 goals have primarily been met including designed a web based health symptom to correspond with prior pen and pencil formats and obtaining necessary IRB and human use approvals to begin survey recruitment efforts.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Oct 01, 2012
- Accession Number
- ADA567839
Entities
People
- Kimberly Sullivan
- Maxine H Krengel
Organizations
- Boston VA Research Institute