Study Finds Increased Risk of ALS Among Gulf War Veterans

A new government-funded study has shown that soldiers who served in the Gulf War were nearly twice as likely to develop amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) than other military personnel.

ALS expert and study co-author Hiroshi Mitsumoto says the findings should encourage researchers to investigate possible environmental causes of the fatal neurological disease, which has no cure — and no obvious cause, in the majority of cases.

"[The study] tells us that ALS could be caused by many different factors. We need to work with top-notch epidemiologists to find any environmental factors [that influence ALS], but I don’t think we can conclude that some military factor is the key," said Mitsumoto, who co-directs the Eleanor and Lou Gehrig MDA/ALS Center at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center in New York, and serves on the Muscular Dystrophy Association’s Medical Advisory Committee.

The study examined nearly 700,000 U.S. military personnel who were deployed between August 2, 1990 and July 31, 1991 to fight in the Persian Gulf War against Iraq.

Of those 700,000 veterans, 40 developed ALS — roughly twice the ALS risk found among 1.8 million veterans who weren’t deployed to the Gulf region during the same period.

Mitsumoto said those results reveal a statistically significant difference between the two groups, but that the biological significance isn’t clear.

"It’s certainly not a big, big difference. What I’m worried about is that the war was over almost 10 years ago, and we may have missed the opportunity to find a potential cause [for the difference]," he said.

In most cases, ALS is probably caused by some combination of genetic susceptibility and environmental factors, such as toxins, pollutants or viral infections, Mitsumoto explained. In years to come, it might be worthwhile to closely monitor the incidence of ALS in U.S. soldiers currently serving in Afghanistan, he added.

The Gulf War study, funded with $1.3 million from the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Defense, began in March 2000, after smaller studies hinted at a possible connection between ALS and Gulf War syndrome (see The ALS Newsletter vol. 5, no. 2).

Based on the results, the government is likely to provide compensation for Gulf War veterans who developed ALS, officials from the VA said.