Abstract
Veterans from the 1991 Gulf War (GW) have suffered from Gulf War illness (GWI) for nearly 30 years. This illness encompasses multiple body systems, including the central nervous system (CNS). Diagnosis and treatment of GWI is difficult because there has not been an objective diagnostic biomarker. Recently, we reported on a newly developed blood biomarker that discriminates GWI from GW healthy controls, and symptomatic controls with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS). The present study was designed to compare levels of these biomarkers between men and women with GWI, as well as sex-specific effects in comparison to healthy GW veterans and symptomatic controls (IBS, ME/CFS). The results showed that men and women with GWI differ in 2 of 10 plasma autoantibodies, with men showing significantly elevated levels. Men and women with GWI showed significantly different levels of autoantibodies in 8 of 10 biomarkers to neuronal and glial proteins in plasma relative to controls. In summary, the present study addressed the utility of the use of plasma autoantibodies for CNS proteins to distinguish among both men and women veterans with GWI and other healthy and symptomatic control groups.
Highlights
Gulf War (GW) veterans have suffered from a condition known as Gulf War illness (GWI), which encompasses multiple bodily systems, including the central nervous system (CNS) [1,2,3]
Differences between men and women with respect to autoantibodies in plasma within the GWI groups were found such that males with GWI showed significantly higher levels of tubulin and myelin-associated glycoprotein (MAG) compared with women veterans with GWI (Table 2, Figure 2)
Mean levels of 8 out of 10 autoantibodies when compared with the combined female control group (IBS, myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), healthy control GW veterans) including tubulin, tau, MAP-2, Myelin basic protein (MBP), MAG, Neurofilament triplet proteins (NFP), CamKII, and α-syn (Table 4)
Summary
Gulf War (GW) veterans have suffered from a condition known as Gulf War illness (GWI), which encompasses multiple bodily systems, including the central nervous system (CNS) [1,2,3]. This chronic condition affects approximately 250,000 GW veterans including a large proportion of the 40,000 women who deployed to the war. GWI has overlapping, but different, symptoms from other disorders that affect women, including. We assessed a candidate plasma biomarker for GWI, and we have shown differences in individuals who meet criteria for GWI versus GW healthy, and non-veteran controls with IBS and CFS
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