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Doctors and Gulf War veterans describe chronic illness, urge testing and antibiotic treatment
Summary
On a Missoula call-in program, Dr. Garth Nicholson and multiple Gulf War veterans described chronic, disabling symptoms they attribute to an infectious agent and urged blood testing and antibiotic therapy; callers and guests discussed testing costs, treatment logistics and concerns about transmission and the blood supply.
Dr. Garth Nicholson, director at the Institute for Molecular Medicine, told listeners in Missoula that many Gulf War veterans have a chronic infection that he and colleagues associate with mycoplasma and that they recommend immediate blood testing and, for positive cases, extended antibiotic therapy.
Nicholson framed the concern in clinical terms: “You need to be tested. You need to have your blood tested as soon as possible to to see if you're positive for these agents. And if you are positive, I think you need to to have extensive antibiotic therapy,” he said on the program.
The detail matters to listeners: host Joyce Riley said the lab Nicholson previously used at MD Anderson had stopped offering free testing and that Immunosciences Lab in California was charging about $150 for Gulf War veterans. Riley added the program organizers would cover the cost of doxycycline for veterans who obtained a prescription and could demonstrate it, to avoid veterans buying animal-formulated antibiotics from feed stores.
Veterans who called and spoke on the air described a suite of disabling symptoms consistent with the guests' characterizations. A veteran identified in the broadcast as Sergeant Rick Rogers described severe, persistent muscle pain, memory loss and repeated infections: “I had pneumonia 12 times and several kidney infections … My lungs filled up with fluid and blood and, they had to use the paddles on me.” Another caller, Laura, described her husband’s progressive debilitation and a long list of diagnoses she said the VA provided, including fibromyalgia and inflammatory conditions.
Nicholson and other physicians on the program linked the clinical picture to laboratory findings they reported in prior research: they said roughly half of tested ill Gulf War veterans had evidence of mycoplasma infection while healthy civilians did not. Nicholson described laboratory and clinical experience treating patients with repeated courses of doxycycline and, in some cases, intravenous antibiotic therapy for advanced or persistent infection.
On the question of contagion, Nicholson warned the agent could spread slowly and be difficult to detect, saying, “It could be responsible for suppressing one's immune system,” and that a slow, low-recognition spread would make the problem more insidious than an acute outbreak. Guests and callers raised specific concerns about potential contamination of the blood supply and transmission to family members; one physician on the program said they had observed similar symptoms in spouses and children of veterans in some communities.
The program offered practical next steps: Nicholson announced the Institute for Molecular Medicine would mail information packages and provided a contact address (Institute for Molecular Medicine, PO Box 52470, Irvine, California 92619). Riley reiterated the local logistics listeners could pursue — getting a blood draw locally and having the sample sent to the lab used by Nicholson’s collaborators — while cautioning about out-of-pocket testing costs.
Discussion on the program distinguished clinical recommendations from broader policy steps: guests urged clinical testing and treatment for symptomatic veterans now while noting that national research and government policy on the cause and scope of Gulf War illnesses remained unsettled.
