As the United States readies for a potential second round of war in Iraq, British scientists say Gulf War illness from the first conflict isn't fallout from stress or other psychological trouble.

In a finding that some American veterans groups suspected all along, a new study says that UK veterans of the 1991 Persian Gulf War who still complain of physical ailments aren't significantly more likely to have psychiatric diagnoses than those without such symptoms or other vets in Britain's armed services.

No explanation of causes yet
"Ill health in Gulf War veterans cannot be fully accounted for by clinical psychological problems, such as depression, anxiety, alcohol problems and post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)," said Dr Khalida Ismail, a scientist at the Gulf War Illnesses Research Unit at Guy's, King's and St Thomas's School of Medicine in London.

Ismail acknowledged that her study, in the September 14 issue of the British Medical Journal, doesn't make inroads into the cause or causes of Gulf War syndrome.

Some American scientists have argued that the illness resulted from exposure to a jumbled cocktail of chemicals including nerve gas, insecticides and other substances. But Ismail won't endorse that explanation without concrete evidence - proof that doesn't yet exist.

Mild and serious symptoms
Most Gulf War complaints involve chronic pain, fatigue, rashes and other relatively mild symptoms. Yet some are far more serious.

After years of denying any health risk associated with service in the Persian Gulf, the US government in 2001 acknowledged that vets had double the normal risk of developing Lou Gehrig's disease. More than half the soldiers who contracted the rare and always fatal muscle-melting disorder as a result of their military service have since died.

Unproven, but under investigation, are links to multiple sclerosis and certain cancers. Conflicting evidence also exists for an increase in birth defects among the children of Persian Gulf vets.

Psychological problems not enough to explain Gulf War illness
In a previous study, Ismail and her colleagues sent a health questionnaire to three groups of British soldiers: some who served in the Gulf War, others who were stationed away from the area at the same time, and a group sent as peacekeepers to Bosnia. Some of the vets had chronic physical complaints.

The survey seemed to show a higher prevalence of emotional disorders in the Gulf combat soldiers with persistent bodily ailments, she said. To investigate further, the researchers examined in person a subset of their original population, consisting of about 340 vets in all.

This time, Ismail's group found that about a quarter of the Gulf War vets with physical symptoms also had clinically diagnosable emotional disorders. That rate was roughly equal to the prevalence of these conditions in the other soldiers. The rate of PTSD ran about 1 to 3 percent across the three groups surveyed.

"Some Gulf War veterans have got more psychological problems," Ismail said. "But it's not enough to explain" Gulf War illness.

Illness not imagined
Phil Kraft, a counsellor with the National Veterans Services Fund in Conneticut, said the latest study confirms what his constituents have been claiming. "This puts it all exactly in the court that Gulf War vets want it. That way it's not all in your head, it's not imagined," Kraft said.

Steve Robinson, a Gulf War vet who is now executive director of the National Gulf War Resource Centre, said the British study and related American research show that PTSD rates of soldiers in the region were lower than for any other conflict analysed.

"Stress has been the main object of everyone's focus. Although there are some vets with that problem, the majority of them are complaining about things unrelated to" PTSD, Robinson said.

Robinson, who sits on a Veterans Affairs committee looking into Gulf War ailments, said more than 350 000 of the 700 000 combat vets from the mission have sought treatment at VA hospitals for service-related complaints. "That's staggering," he added.

Lessons to be learned?
So are there lessons from the first Iraq attack that might protect soldiers in a future assault?

Robinson believes there are, but he accused the Pentagon of ignoring them. Perhaps most important, he said, the government has failed to fully implement a law that requires screening of soldiers before, during and after the mission. Doing so would help identify emerging illness trends, he said.

Robinson also said even today's high-tech armed forces are ill-equipped to deal with chemical and biological agents they might face in Iraq. "Our detectors don't detect, our alarms don't work properly. And we've told Saddam [Hussein, Iraq's leader] that we're coming in the front door."

When attacking an enemy known to harbour chemical and biological weaponry, such advanced notice is "bad policy," Robinson said.

"All of [the scientific evidence] points to the fact that there's a problem," Robinson added. "If we're getting ready to go back, we need to address the veterans that were there 11 years ago because they have significant health concerns that are still not being addressed today, even though science has shown that it's more than stress." - (HealthScout)