Question:
Vaccines or chemical pollution - who knows? But it all boils down to central nervous system damage, right? The fact that it's so much like MS (and for that matter, so are lots of things) really makes me think that these same factors (pollution and vaccination) have a lot to answer for in terms of public health, whether it's Gulf War Syndrome, MS, multiple chemical sensitivity, chronic fatigue, etc, etc. WE're doing terrible things to our world, and ourselves, and we need to do things differently.

Answer: The Texas researchers have found the amount of brain cell loss in the Gulf War veterans to be comparable to that of patients with brain diseases like amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease), multiple sclerosis, dementia and other degenerative neurological disorders, although the brain areas affected are different. Veterans with damage to the right basal ganglia appeared to share symptoms such as impaired sense of direction, memory lapses and depression.

Brain cell losses on the left side appeared to cause more general confusion, including difficulty in understanding instructions, reading, solving problems and making decisions. Left side damage also appeared to correlate with elevated levels of dopamine, a neurotransmitter involved in movement and emotion. Different Symptoms Experienced Damage to the brain stem appeared to account at least in part for loss of balance and dizzy spells in the veterans.

This helps explain why not all patients have the same exact symptoms. Depending on which brain regions were damaged by chemicals in the war, veterans may have more or different types of symptoms,ґґ Haley said. In past research the Texas team has identified three primary Gulf War syndromes, and tried to link sets of symptoms with different combinations of chemicals toxic to brain cells.

It may have been the combination of low-level nerve gas exposure and anti-gas tablets that caused the brain damage underlying (the most severe form of the) syndrome,ґґ Haley said. Syndrome 3, characterized by central pain, is found in veterans who wore insect repellent with high concentrations of deet, a repellent chemical, and who experienced side effects from the anti-nerve gas tablets. The researchers noted that brain scans performed on veterans suffering from combat stress and post-traumatic stress symptoms did not correlate significantly with damage in any of the three brain regions. As many as 100,000 of the 700,000 US soldiers who served in the Gulf War complain of symptoms, which many attribute to exposure to chemicals.