UPI NewsTrack Health and Science News

Gulf War syndrome real, report says

WASHINGTON, Nov. 17 (UPI) -- Gulf War syndrome is real and afflicts about 25 percent of the 700,000 U.S. troops who served in the 1991 conflict, a U.S. report said Monday.

Two chemical exposures consistently associated with the disorder -- one to a drug given to soldiers to protect against nerve gas and the other sed to protect against desert pests -- were cited as causes in the congressionally mandated report presented to Veterans Affairs Secretary James Peake, the Los Angeles Times reported.

"The extensive body of scientific research now available consistently indicates that Gulf War illness is real, that it is a result of neuro-toxic exposures during Gulf War deployment, and that few veterans have recovered or substantially improved with time," the report said.

The report supports complaints made by hundreds of thousands of U.S. and allied veterans who reported various neurological problems, the Times said. The government for years maintained that the symptoms manifested were because of stress or other unknown causes.

The panel of scientists and veterans also called upon Congress to appropriate $60 million annually to conduct research into finding a cure for the disorder.

"The tragedy here is that there are currently no treatments," said panel chair James H. Binns, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense and a Vietnam veteran.

Many Gulf War veterans reported problems with memory and concentration, persistent headaches, unexplained fatigue and widespread pain. Other complaints include chronic digestive problems, respiratory symptoms and skin rashes.

Scientists warm to possibility of moon ice

PROVIDENCE, R.I., Nov. 17 (UPI) -- Researchers at Brown University and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., say they're checking the lunar poles for evidence of ice.

Carle Pieters, a planetary geologist at the Providence, R.I., university, and her colleagues will be analyzing data from one of 11 instruments aboard the Indian spacecraft Chandrayaan-1 that began orbiting the moon earlier in November, the Providence (R.I.) Journal reported Monday.

Pieters is the principal investigator for the Moon Mineralogy Mapper that, among other things, examines sunlight bouncing off the lunar surface. Because substances reflect light at specific wavelengths, the project will provide a detailed look at the composition of the surface.

As the Indian spacecraft crosses the moon's poles, Pieters said, researchers are hoping enough light will scatter to the depths of the craters so the mapper can detect the presence of water ice.

"Everyone wants to know if there's water at the poles," she said. "It's hypothesized to be there. We know there is hydrogen (one component of water) at the poles but we don't know if there's water at the poles."

The project will be the first detailed global assessment of the moon's geology, she said.

"We've been waiting a long time for this -- about 30 years," she said. "And now it may be a reality. I'm excited."

TB strains more drug-resistant, WHO says

GENEVA, Switzerland, Nov. 17 (UPI) -- Tuberculosis is mutating into dangerous, drug-resistant forms for which no cure is known, health leaders in Switzerland said.

One strain of XDR-TB, which stands for extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis, doesn't respond to antibiotics normally used to treat TB, making it virtually incurable and threatening to become a pandemic, CNN reported Monday.

The World Health Organization estimated about 40,000 new cases of XDR-TB emerge annually.

Health experts said XDR-TB shouldn't exist because TB is curable, CNN reported. But if anti-TB drugs aren't correctly administered or used, the disease can mutate into deadlier strands.

The World Health Organization said not enough money has been raised to combat the more virulent TB strains, which is linked to poverty, while drugs used to treat regular TB cost $20 a patient in the developing world.

Furthermore, no new scientific developments to fight TB have been made in more than four decades, said Louise Holly of Action, a group with the goal of controlling the spread of TB.

"The drug resistant strand is a highly contagious airborne disease," Holly said. "With increased travel and globalization, it is possible for anyone to pick up the disease, even in developed countries like the United States and (Britain)."

Whales have an ear for Chinook

VICTORIA, British Columbia, Nov. 17 (UPI) -- U.S. and Canadian researchers said killer whales can hear the difference between Chinook and other types of salmon.

Researchers said the whales, which swim the waters off British Columbia and Washington state, used echolocation to sort the Chinook from the Coho and Sockeye salmon. The whales apparently prefer Coho because it is a fattier fish.

The researchers found "the echo structure from similar sized but different species of salmon were different and probably recognizable by foraging killer whales," bioacoustician Whitlow Au of the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology said in a release.

Marine ecologist John Horne of the School of Aquatic and Fisheries Science at the University of Washington, Seattle, said the secret to the killer whale's ability to choose their favorite entree is the salmon's swim bladder, which controls the buoyancy of the fish and is responsible for most of the reflected sound energy, Canwest News Service reported Monday.

The report, presented last week at a recent meeting of the Acoustical Society of America in Florida, said the swim bladder on a Chinook salmon is half the size of other salmon species.