Chronic XXXX in a population-based study of Gulf War veterans.

@entity1 @entity1295 @entity5815
Fatigue has been associated with illness in veterans of the Gulf War; however, few studies have confirmed self-reported @entity1295 by using clinical evaluation, and symptomatic veterans have not been evaluated with established criteria for @entity5815 ( @entity5815 ). The authors describe the frequency and clinical characteristics of @entity5815 in a sample of veterans residing in the northwestern United States. The sample was selected randomly from U.S. Department of Defense databases of troops deployed to southwest Asia during the Gulf War. The selected individuals were invited to participate in a clinical case-control study of unexplained illness. Of 799 survey respondents eligible for clinical evaluation, 178 had @entity1295 symptoms. Of the 130 veterans who were evaluated clinically, 103 had unexplained @entity1295 , and 44 veterans met the 1994 U.S. Centers for Disease Control criteria for @entity5815 . In this population, the authors estimated a minimum prevalence of any unexplained @entity1295 to be 5.1%, and of @entity5815 to be 2.2%. The estimated prevalence was greater among females than among males. Cases were similar to healthy controls, as determined by laboratory tests and physical findings. In comparison to several clinical studies of @entity5815 @entity1 , the authors of this study found a lower proportion of veterans who reported a sudden onset of symptoms (19%) vs. a gradual onset (50%). Although it has previously been suggested that veterans of the Gulf War suffer from higher rates of chronic @entity1295 than the general population, the study results described herein--on the basis of clinical examination of a population-based sample of veterans-actually indicate that an increased rate may indeed exist. Gulf War veterans with unexplained @entity1295 should be encouraged to seek treatment so that the impact of these symptoms on overall quality of life can be reduced.
