Hyporeactivity and Gulf War Illness

• Status: Completed
• Trial end date: 2002-09-01
• Target enrollment: 0
• Participant gender: All

Summary

This research project is a follow-up to the prior VA-funded study that found that chronic fatigue reported by many Gulf War veterans may be a symptom of dysfunctional cardiovascular stress response regulation. Specifically, ill veterans had diminished autonomic responses during demanding psychosocial tasks involving high level cognitive processing and emotional stress. There was a close relationship between clinical status of ill veterans and their inability to mount an appropriate physiological response under stress. The main objective of the present investigation is to determine the specific mechanism through which this abnormality may contribute to Gulf War-related chronic fatigue. We also observed that Gulf veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) had the most dampened autonomic activation to stressors involving higher brain activities. The second major focus of this study is to explore the role of a psychiatric disorder, specifically PTSD, as a factor in abnormalities in stress response regulation. This aspect of the study may also provide pertinent information as to the role of stress of military deployment as a contributing factor in post-Gulf War illnesses.

• Phase: N/A
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers?: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Details

• Lead Sponsor: US Department of Veterans Affairs; VA Office of Research and Development
• Treatments: Dobutamine; Oxymetazoline; Phenylephrine

Criteria

• All former military personnel who participated in the Gulf War campaign and who meet the criteria for inclusion will be eligible to participate in the study.

• Subjects with medical conditions that could explain their symptoms or with CDC-defined psychiatric exclusions (schizophrenia, mania, bulimia, and substance abuse disorders) will not participate in the study.

• Other exclusions will be pregnancy, traumatic brain injury, or a history of any form of cardiovascular disease or related symptoms.

• Other restrictions on participation will include any medication that impact on cardiovascular autonomic control, benzodiazepines, and antibiotics.

• Subjects taking nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory/analgesic agents, mild short-acting hypnotics, and SSRIs will be accepted into the study, but will be requested to withdraw from their medications with the agreement and under the supervision of their physician. These subjects will be scheduled for the study after a washout period of 5 half-lives.