Background: The authors of prior small studies raised the hypothesis that symptoms in veterans of the 1991 Gulf War, such as chronic diarrhea, dizziness, fatigue, and sexual dysfunction, are due to cholinergic autonomic dysfunction. Objective: To perform a confirmatory test of this prestated hypothesis in a larger, representative sample of Gulf War veterans.

Veterans with different Gulf War syndromes have biochemical evidence of neuronal damage in different distributions in the basal ganglia and brainstem.

No abstract

The reduction in functioning neuronal mass in the left basal ganglia of these veterans with Gulf War syndrome seems to have altered central dopamine production in a lateralized pattern. This finding supports the theory that Gulf War syndrome is a neurologic illness, in part related to injury to dopaminergic neurons in the basal ganglia.