Ten years after the Gulf War began, researchers are still trying to sort out the causes of the mysterious Gulf War Syndrome (GWS), which afflicts veterans with a wide army of ailments including fatigue, memory loss and insomnia. Now British scientists believe it may be partially due to the timing of vaccinations--the stress of war doesn't seem to mix well with an immunization cocktail.
Soldiers were often told their ailments were psychological when they first complained of them. But according to Michael Hotopf, a senior lecturer at London's King's College (KC), GWS is too complex to be either purely psychological or purely physical. "It is not an either/or question," he says.
At KC's Gulf War Research Unit, Hotopf and other researchers searched veterans' records for a connection between vaccinations and later illnesses. Their findings, published recently in the British Medical Journal, indicate that the syndrome's symptoms appear mostly in personnel who received vaccinations after they had been sent to the Gulf--not before. Hotopf believes that adding the stress of war to the physical toll of vaccines might have set the servicemen up for illness. "There may be an Interaction between vaccines and other hazards---physical or psychological--in the Gulf," he says.
