Studies Show High Gulf War Illness Rates

WASHINGTON (Reuter) - Two new studies show that more Gulf War veterans have reported a variety of unexplained flu-like symptoms than military people who were not in the 1991 Gulf War, a defense official said.

"I have no idea at this point if we will ever settle on a single cause, a syndrome," Assistant Navy Secretary Bernard Rostker, the Defense Department official in charge of Gulf War illness investigations, said at a briefing Tuesday.

"We know that people who were in the Gulf have symptoms at rates higher than their compatriots, their colleagues."

Rostker made the comments in confirming a New York Times story that both studies, which are nearing completion, show Gulf War veterans have reported higher rates of headaches, muscle aches and diarrhea than military people who were not in the Gulf.

One is a study of 3,927 military people and veterans by the federal Centers for Disease Control and the other is a Navy study of 1,500 Seabees, he said.

"There's no question that these two studies show that people who served in the Gulf have more symptoms and the symptoms in the range we're talking about -- headaches, diarrhea and those kinds of things," Rostker said.

"There is no question that some people, some of them still on active duty, have symptoms and we can't adequately explain to them or to ourselves why they are not well," he said.