Neurology

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Friday, December 6, 1996 

Local Stress Research May Explain 
'Gulf War Syndrome'

JERUSALEM (December 6) -- Israeli researchers have found stress can disarm the "blood/brain barrier" that protects the brain from drugs and other chemicals in the circulatory system. 

The discovery helps explain the differing reaction in peacetime and in war to the drug pyridostigmine, which was given to US and Israeli soldiers during the Gulf War to protect them against chemical weapon attacks by Saddam Hussein. 

The research, by Hebrew University neurobiologist Prof. Hermona Soreq and Dr. Alon Friedman, a Soroka Hospital neurosurgeon who was an IDF doctor during the Gulf War, was published on Tuesday in "Nature Medicine". 



More than half a million US soldiers were given prophylactic doses of pyridostigmine during the 1991 war, and some IDF soldiers received it as well for a short time. 

Soreq said the research, conducted on mice, was important because it meant people in conditions of stress should get a lower dose of medication. 

IDF soldiers who were given the drug during peacetime in clinical trials suffered from minimal side effects, such as sweating, mild diarrhea, excessive urination and salivation, as well as stomach pains. But 24 percent of those who received the drug during wartime complained of dizziness, headaches, nervousness and reduced concentration - central nervous system symptoms that showed the drug had reached the brain. US soldiers complained about long-term symptoms, but the cause has never been proven. 

The brain is unique among organs in that, due to the special compressed structure of its tissues, few chemicals are known to pass into it from the blood. Substances pass from the capillaries to cells, and then to other cells, through a pump-like mechanism. Pyridostigmine is regarded as the most effective drug for preventing nerve gas from killing those exposed to it, and it was believed not to pass the blood/brain barrier. 


by JUDY SIEGEL, Jerusalem Post.

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