Article: Brain studies show chronic fatigue syndrome and Gulf War illness are distinct conditions

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2019-10-brain-chronic-fatigue-syndrome-gulf.html

 

With so many similar symptoms, it makes one wonder if some Gulf War Illness patients might actually have ME/CFS. I don't think there's any reason to believe that being a Gulf War veteran would lower one's risk of getting CFS, but a history of Gulf War service no doubt increases your odds of getting a GWI diagnosis. I'm just thinking of the case where a Gulf War veteran happens to develop CFS and it's mistaken for GWI due to his/her military service.

By contrast, I'd be surprised if one could get a GWI diagnosis without being a Gulf War veteran.

 

Chances are higher that those people with childhood CFS (diagnosed or not) will not get into the military, so if there is a genetic component to the chance that somebody will develop CFS then military personnel are less likely to - I have no stats at all to back that up, it just seems that it would be logical.

 

Good point! It's easy to forget that adult percentages, such as the .422% obtained by Jason, don't, so far as I know, exclude adults who became sick as children.

ETA:

It seems like children have better CFS recovery rates than adults. Even so, those who recover still might be less likely to enter military service.

 

Or whatever combination of conditions gulf war vets encountered include those likely to trigger or unmask an ME-like chronic condition.

 

not according to Wessely

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-...hose-with-depression-there-would-9924174.html

 

Not surprising Baraniuk oversaw this given his historical overlapping emphasis. I kind of like that he doesn't hold back when he labels ME/CFS and GWS "diseases of the brain." He joins Natelson in this regard, if I recall correctly. I personally would have preferred if he opined "diseases that effect the brain."

Still treading dangerous ground. I found the "negative emotion" and PTSD references disturbing. I'd be curious to know more about what they are actually doing with these fMRI tests, during the tests, to evoke responses.

The article gets some things wrong, too, like PEM primarily follows physical exertion. Maybe for the larger subset, but this is still misleading.

All-in-all, a good piece. Mixed signals, though.

 

Prior research by Baraniuk on differences between ME and GWI: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-15383-9.

Exercise – induced changes in cerebrospinal fluid miRNAs in Gulf War Illness, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and sedentary control subjects

 

Thread here, https://www.s4me.info/threads/exerc...sedentary-control-subjects-2017-baraniuk.931/

 

Dr. Klimas has also done research using tests that were able to distinguish patients with ME/CFS from patients with Gulf War Illness and also from controls.

But don't ask me to explain it!

I know there's a thread on the forum somewhere but not up to searching at the moment. But I do have the link to this video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TizGFYJyLo

 

Most GWI patients are men of diverse race and have normal BMIs. Soldiers would have 10-20% the the risk of a random person.

 

Yes, I believe this difficulty has been discussed as some of them haven't been to the Gulf, yet still appear to have GWI. A rename was discussed, parallels were drawn to diagnoses given in other wars (some of which were likely PTSD, so not all the same thing). I'm not up to locating the papers right now.

 

I don't follow. ME patients are of diverse race/ethnicity. (Even if mainly well-off white middle aged women are getting diagnosed, we know from population-based studies that everyone gets ME, including in other countries. Military doctors are maybe a bit less biased in diagnosis, however, and GWI probably has different stigmas, rather than having ME's "bored/stressed housewife/working woman" stigma.)

The BMIs of ME patients are all over the place, from normal to high to underweight. (Most people I see in studies or pictures of look pretty normal.)

Being a soldier would be correlated with normal BMI (can't be too high as you have to stay in shape: can't be too low or you might not pass the strength and endurance testing).

Being a soldier is correlated with being a man. Women are definitely soldiers but it's still quite a bit less common (in the US, anyway).

While getting diagnosed with ME is correlated with being a woman, men do get it. We aren't sure the sex ratio of who has it, because most people with ME aren't diagnosed and our data is not good enough.

 

I would like to see the published study. Wondering whether this reflects greater effort to maintain the same performance post-exercise.

 

Just a bit of trivia, but one of the epidemics was in an army barracks among male soldiers.

 

Veterans study suggest two sub-types of Gulf War illness
Georgetown University Medical Center

full article here:
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-12/gumc-vss121019.php

 

I wonder if there are some who have moved from one group to another. My daughter did not have OI issues until this year.

 

I am not sure if it was in relation to this study or another, but someone raised an interesting possibility that the two types of GWS could be GWS and GWS in conjunction with ME.

 

Free full text:

https://academic.oup.com/braincomms...1093/braincomms/fcz039/5673581?searchresult=1

 

Another article
Brain Imaging of Veterans Suggests Gulf War Illness More Complex Than Previously Thought

full article here:
https://scitechdaily.com/brain-imag...illness-more-complex-than-previously-thought/