San Francisco

The US government is set to give research into Gulf War syndrome a sharp increase in funds following advice from scientists who believe that ill veterans suffered neurological damage during the 1991 conflict.

On 25 June, an advisory panel appointed by veterans' affairs secretary Anthony Principi concluded that research into whether neurological damage had been caused by vaccination or exposure to nerve agents “should be aggressively pursued”, and recommended that Congress commit $450 million over three years to the project.

The administration of President Bill Clinton tended to play down the idea that nerve gas or vaccines might have caused the health problems reported by some veterans, calling evidence of any link inconclusive. Instead, it maintained that the most likely cause was traumatic stress.

But during his election campaign, President George W. Bush promised to investigate evidence of such links, and he has since appointed officials, such as Principi, who are sympathetic to the veterans' claims.

The science of Gulf War syndrome has changed little over the years, however. Epidemiological studies have shown that more Gulf War veterans suffer symptoms such as dizziness compared with other veterans, but a decade of research has failed to find a single 'syndrome', or its cause.

In September 2000, an Institute of Medicine panel reviewed 1,000 research papers and concluded that there was insufficient evidence to support a link between nerve agents and veterans' symptoms (see Nature 407, 121; 200010.1038/35025263).

The advisory panel, which included several researchers whose work has pointed to a neurological cause of Gulf War syndrome, is urging that the new money should be administered by the National Institutes of Health. Panel member Robert Haley, director of epidemiology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, says that the defence department cannot be trusted to address the issue fairly. Haley believes that exposure to chemicals may have caused brain damage in some veterans (see Nature 385, 187; 1997).

But Gregory Gray, an epidemiologist at the University of Iowa who has studied the problem, says: “A lot of sharp investigators have already looked at this. I'm sceptical that more studies will show anything different.”