Government Study of Veterans Finds No Evidence of a ‘Gulf War Disease’ : Military: Examinations of more than 10,000 Desert Storm participants find multiple ailments not linked to any one cause, the Pentagon says.

A massive government study of more than 10,000 veterans of Operation Desert Storm in 1991 has found no evidence of any kind of mysterious “Gulf War disease,” despite claims by some victims that they suffer from severe symptoms, the Pentagon said Tuesday.

Dr. Stephen Joseph, assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, said the yearlong investigation showed that the symptoms from which Persian Gulf War veterans are suffering almost invariably involve “multiple” diseases that do not stem from any one cause.

Moreover, he said, the incidence of such symptoms is about the same as that ordinarily found in the general population--suggesting that the veterans are no worse off as a group than their counterparts in civilian life.

“The people . . . with these complaints are suffering from those symptoms,” but they are not caused by any one illness, Joseph told reporters during a briefing at the Pentagon. “There is not . . . a single mystery illness or unique Gulf War illness.”

The wide-ranging inquiry, which officials described as “definitive,” reinforced earlier studies that were conducted among smaller groups of veterans. Besides concluding that there is no Gulf War disease, it also denied claims that the symptoms stemmed from chemical agents or gas.

However, the report was immediately denounced by some Gulf War veterans groups, some of which have suggested that the Pentagon may be trying to cover up evidence of a mystery disease, possibly stemming from chemical or gas attacks by Iraqi troops.

Richard H. Haines, president of Gulf Veterans International, a group based in New Albany, Ind., that first raised the issue, dismissed the report as “a continued misrepresentation of the medical reality.”

“What they haven’t said is that the average vet has 30 to 40 of these symptoms,” Haines asserted. “We consider it preposterous that able-bodied, combat-ready soldiers . . . would suddenly incur 20 or 30 [such] ailments and that this would happen to tens of thousands.”

The veterans groups’ mistrust of the government’s assertions has taken on the intensity of the longstanding fight over the Defense Department’s handling of those declared missing in action during the Vietnam War.

Many of the veterans who were deployed in the Persian Gulf region have reported fatigue, joint pain, headaches, sleep disturbances and depression. And a few of them have contended that these symptoms eventually have spread to their spouses and to newborn children.

There are no definitive figures on how many Persian Gulf veterans are suffering from such symptoms. Of the 697,000 deployed to the region during the 1990-91 war, about 23,000 have enrolled in the Pentagon’s research program; 17,000 of these have requested examinations.

But a series of government investigations--including one made public last December on an initial list of 1,019 Persian Gulf War veterans--have concluded that despite the veterans’ complaints, physicians can find no evidence of a Gulf War disease or syndrome.

Rep. Joseph Kennedy (D-Mass.), who has pressed the issue in Congress on behalf of the veterans groups, said that the Pentagon still had not addressed the issue squarely and called on the department to speed up its efforts and research.

The departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs “should not think this battle is over,” he said in a statement shortly after the report was issued.

The 50-page report contains these major conclusions:

* Despite complaints by veterans involving a multitude of symptoms, Defense Department and Veterans Affairs physicians have found “no clinical evidence” of a “new or unique illness or syndrome” among Persian Gulf veterans and do not believe that one exists.

* Rather, the symptoms that the veterans reported involve “multiple illnesses with overlapping symptoms and causes” and are similar to those that physicians have come to expect in the general civilian population--meaning the veterans have not been unusually hard hit.

* Although some symptoms--such as fatigue, joint pain, headaches and sleep disturbances--have seemed to be “very common” among the veterans who were examined, medical evaluations have shown no clear-cut physical explanation or “cause” in 20% to 75% of the cases.

* Relatively few of those reporting “Gulf War” symptoms were severely disabled by them. More than 81% of the 10,020 veterans examined had not missed work because of their illness during the 90 days before their evaluation and only 7% missed more than a week on the job.

* The study showed that three types of ailments occurred more frequently among Gulf War veterans than in the general population--bone and tissue disorders such as joint and back pain, psychological problems and other, “ill-defined” symptoms. But it offered no explanation.

In a nod to the veterans groups, Joseph said that the Pentagon is “not closing the books on this” issue and would “keep looking” for a Gulf War disease, but it was clear that the Defense Department, at least, considered the mystery to be largely over.

“I want to be clear that I’m not saying here that there are not people who are significantly ill, who are seriously disabled, as a result of their symptoms--they certainly are,” Joseph said on Tuesday.

But, he added, “the symptoms . . . don’t cluster into specific diseases or in identifiable syndromes.” Rather, he said, “what you have is . . . a combination of symptoms and illnesses that you would expect to find in [the general] population.”