FROM THE ASSOCIATED PRESS


WASHINGTON (AP) -- Increasing evidence ties pesticides and other chemicals to some, not all, of the Gulf War illnesses that afflict thousands of veterans of the 1991 war, says an analysis published Monday.

Nearly 30 percent of troops who took part in the brief war have reported symptoms that include fatigue, memory loss, pain and difficulty sleeping. Citing the variety of symptoms, the Institute of Medicine in 2006 declared there is no single Gulf War syndrome, although troops who served in the Persian Gulf were sicker than those who didn't.

Multiple chemical exposures have long been chief suspects. So Dr. Beatrice Golomb of the University of California, San Diego, reviewed 115 studies of neurological symptoms and veterans' exposure to three related chemicals: the anti-nerve gas pyridostigmine bromide, or PB, given to troops at the time; pesticides used aggressively to control sand flies; and the nerve gas sarin.

Those chemicals belong to a family known as acetylcholinesterase inhibitors that work the same way in the body, she wrote Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Among the evidence Golomb cites: Veterans who are genetically less able to clear this type of chemical from their bodies had a higher chance of suffering symptoms, which mirror problems reported by pesticide-exposed agriculture workers.

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END of AP release

REPLY TO DAN:

This piece came from the Associated
Press, and one of the reasons I use
cut-and-paste to transfer over the
AP releases, Dan, is because they
rotate out their news almost every
2 days. The articles do NOT have
a very long life on the Internet.
So I grab them as soon as they are
up before they disappear.

It has already cycled off the AP
however, some of the membering newspapers
may still have it up in their local
archives. Go into www.Google.com
and in the SEARCH function try
and match on keywords which are
in the article itself and the date
of it posted at the top of my entry.
That way you will know you have
the right HIT when it comes up
on your SEARCH list.

I have given up only using LINKS
for AP releases specifically because
of their very fast rotation times.
By using cut-and-paste, I can keep
it here for however long it takes
for the new readers to come in and
know about it.

Where can I find this article? After 4 years of medical neglect by the VA I was finally diagnosed with GWS....WoW! It didn't take a rocket scientist to come to the conclusion it just tokk four years...Mmmmm!