Can we make medical sense of the multiple symptoms that occur in Gulf War veterans?
According to Gronseth, “Although an objective marker to GWS would be useful for studies, the absence of such a marker does not make the syndrome any less legitimate… The real debate surrounding medically unexplained conditions is not whether or not they exist, but defining their cause.” Many patients with GWS meet criteria for other medically unexplained conditions, also known as multi-symptom syndromes, such as chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, and multiple chemical sensitivity. These conditions are poorly understood, but have a very similar pattern of symptoms and findings as GWS. Some underlying mechanisms have been shown to be the same as well. An important VA study in which 1000 deployed 1991 Gulf War and 1000 nondeployed Gulf era veterans were carefully examined 10 years after the Gulf War, found that deployed veterans were 2.3 times as likely to have fibromyalgia, and 40.6 times as likely to have chronic fatigue syndrome as nondeployed era veterans, confirming a relation
