BY ROXANE ASSAF, The Herald-Sun
© Copyright 2003. All rights reserved.
The Durham Herald Company
October 28, 2003 11:07 pm

WASHINGTON -- A Durham doctor and Duke University medical professor who launched a national registry for military veterans with Lou Gehrig's disease this summer said increased enrollment in the registry might help investigators explore the connection between the illness and military service in the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

"If we can get more people reporting their cases, we can do DNA studies and find the cause," Eugene Oddone told those attending a VA conference this week.

The two-day meeting of the VA's Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses brought together doctors with expertise in a variety of specialties, including birth defects, neurotoxins and anthrax vaccines.

As the VA's principal investigator, Oddone explained that the National Registry of Veterans with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis -- commonly called Lou Gehrig's disease -- is for veterans who have been diagnosed with the condition. Investigators plan to monitor the health of those who enroll in the registry, and the data will be used in continuing research.

Oddone called the incurable neurological disease a "death sentence," but, he said, "ALS, on average, is still very rare.

"There are a lot of dangers on the battlefield. If you added up all the things people die from -- and you believe this could be one of them -- ALS would be toward the bottom of the list."

The VA has recognized ALS as a service-related illness for more than a year and a half.

As part of Oddone's research, the military population deployed to the Persian Gulf in the 1990s was compared to the population of service members who did not go. According to the study's findings, the percentage of those with ALS who had served in the Gulf was almost double the percentage those with the disease who had not served there, but it also found that the collective occurrence of the disease was only one or two out of 100,000.

"A twofold risk is kind of high," Oddone said, "but the overall rate is so low."

Out of 107 cases of ALS identified among about 2 million military personnel, 40 of them occurred among the 696,000 service members who were deployed. However, according to Oddone, only seven of those were attributable to "Gulf War syndrome," the array of ailments associated with those who served in the military during the Gulf War.

Nonetheless, the age of ALS onset in the general population is usually 40 or older, while cases among deployed military personnel has increased among those 25 to 44 years old.

"The tension for everybody," Oddone said, "is that we don't know why."

Asked if that tension also was coming from the Department of Defense, Oddone alluded to "significant political ramifications" if culpability was found on the department's part.

However, he said, "The Department of Defense would love to know the reason. If we found out it was black boots causing the disease, they would say 'Let's change to brown.' "

Equally mysterious is the incidence of ALS among Air Force personnel, where it is reportedly higher than in any other branch of the military.

Oddone suggested that in any of the confirmed cases, a multitude of factors -- or combinations of factors -- could be at play, including exposure to oil well fires, numerous vaccines, chemical warfare, nerve gas antidotes and depleted uranium.

ALS is a chronic degenerative disease that attacks cells in the brain and spinal cord that control muscle movement. The muscles weaken and become progressively paralyzed, leading to an inability to move, swallow and breathe. The disease can lie dormant for up to 10 years, and once diagnosed, the average life expectancy is 36 months.

ALS was given its more well-known name -- Lou Gehrig's disease -- after New York Yankees baseball star Lou Gehrig died of it in 1941 at age 37.

The registry was funded by a million-dollar grant from the Department of Veterans Affairs.