Effie-Photini C Tsilibary, Eric P Souto, Lisa M James, Brian E Engdahl, Apostolos P Georgopoulos
Gulf War Illness (GWI) is a chronic debilitating disease of unknown etiology that affects the brain and has afflicted many veterans of the 1990-91 Gulf War (GW). We showed recently1 that blood serum from patients suffering from GWI exerts detrimental effects on neural cultures, including reduced growth, increased apoptosis, and disruption of neural network function. Remarkably, these adverse effects were prevented by the concomitant addition to the culture of serum from healthy Gulf War (GW) era veterans. We interpreted those findings1 in the context of our hypothesis that GWI is, at least partly, due to circulating pathogenic persistent antigens2 , probably coming from vaccines administered to GW veterans who lacked crucial Human Leukocyte Antigen (HLA) class 2 alleles3 and, therefore, could not make antibodies against those antigens; by contrast, healthy GW veterans who received the same vaccines and possessed HLA protection3 made antibodies that neutralized the various antigens...
2018: Journal of Neurology & Neuromedicine