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03/25/00 VA confirms Nicolsons' data on chronic infections in Gulf War Illness patients. Earlier this month at the NIH Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Coordinating Board in Washington DC, LT COL Charles Engel, M.D., a psychiatrist and Director of the Gulf War Illness Center at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington DC and Co-Principal Investigator of the VA Cooperative Clinical Study Program #475 (Antibiotic treatment of mycoplasmal infections in Gulf War Illness patients), reported that ~40% of over 1,200 GWI patients tested from the 30+ VA and DoD institutions involved in the study were positive for mycoplasmal infections, and of these positive patients ~80% were positive for M. fermentans infections. These data are almost exactly what the Institute for Molecular Medicine previously published for GWI (~45% positive, >80% M. fermentans) and support the IMM's suggested use of antibiotics to treat this condition. From the results reported at the NIH Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Coordinating Board and the publications from the IMM on Gulf War Illness (in the Gulf War Illness section of this website), the Institute recommends that it would be prudent for all Gulf War Illness patients to be tested for mycoplasmal infections at our certified reference diagnostic laboratory, International Molecular Diagnostics, Inc (www.imd-lab.com) (or Tel: 714-799-7177, ext. 202) and to treat such mycoplasmal infections when they are found in the blood. For further information contact: |