Soldiers from the 1st Armored Division’s 501st Military Police Company convoy near Contingency Operating Station Hammer, Iraq, Jan. 2, 2010. (Samantha Beuterbaugh/U.S. Army)
The National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine is seeking personal stories from veterans who developed certain neurodegenerative conditions after deploying to the Gulf War and post-9/11 conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq.
A National Academies committee is conducting a review to determine the weight of the evidence indicating an association between eight neurodegenerative conditions and substances veterans were commonly exposed to during those deployments, according to the organization’s website.
Based on the completed review, the committee will recommend areas for future primary studies or systematic reviews, the site states.
The Department of Veterans Affairs is sponsoring the review.
The committee is holding a pair of virtual listening sessions on May 20 and 21. Veterans can register for them at https://events.nationalacademies.org/46672.
Selected veterans will be invited to share “brief reflections on their military service and lived experience with their condition,” according to the website.
Veterans will each have about five minutes to share their perspectives during the sessions, either live or through a prerecorded video.
The exposures being investigated include pesticides, jet fuels, solvents, heavy metals, PFAS and particulate matter.
Among the eight neurological conditions being examined are Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease, which have become commonplace over the past few decades.
But the committee is most interested in conditions much less familiar to the public.
Those are primary lateral sclerosis, which affects the brain cells that control body movements; myasthenia gravis, a chronic autoimmune neuromuscular disorder; peripheral neuropathy, which damages the body’s peripheral nerves; transverse myelitis, an inflammation of part of the spinal cord; neuromyelitis optica, an autoimmune disorder that attacks optic nerves and the spinal cord; and inclusion body myositis, a progressive muscle-wasting disease.
Linking neurological conditions to hazardous exposures is complex because of the lengthy time between the exposure and the onset of symptoms.
By the time the condition manifests in a service member decades later, for example, determining what triggered the condition becomes nearly impossible.
Epidemiologists and toxicologists are also challenged in determining the exposure level of any given service member.
For example, vast numbers of U.S. troops were exposed to toxins and particulates from burn pits during deployments to the 1990-91 Gulf War and to Iraq and Afghanistan after 9/11.
But measuring the degree to which a particular service member was exposed remains difficult to determine because none was fitted with personal sensors or real-time monitoring devices to provide a baseline of exposure.
As evidence of an association between diseases and exposure accumulates over many years, the VA sometimes designates certain medical conditions as “presumptive.”
That means the veteran becomes eligible for disability benefits because the VA will automatically assume the illness was caused by serving at a specific location or job where exposure was likely.
The 2022 PACT Act expanded and extended eligibility for VA health care for veterans by, among other provisions, adding more than 20 additional presumptive conditions for burn pit exposure.
