NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Chronic fatigue in Gulf War veterans may be associated with a polymorphism of the DCP1 gene, which encodes angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE), according to new research.
Drs. Georgirene D. Vladutiu and Benjamin H. Natelson evaluated genomic DNA extracted from blood specimens of 49 Gulf War veterans with chronic fatigue syndrome or idiopathic chronic fatigue (CFS/ICF), 30 healthy Gulf War veterans and 45 controls. They describe their findings in the July issue of Muscle and Nerve.
The frequency of the I allele in the DCP1 gene was significantly lower in veterans with CFS/ICF than in health veterans (0.15 versus 0.48, p < 0.0001).
The frequency of the II genotype was 0.08 and 0.35 in affected versus healthy veterans (p = 0.02), while the corresponding frequencies of the DD genotype were 0.78 and 0.39, respectively (p = 0.007).
Veterans with the DD genotype were eight times more likely to develop chronic fatigue than were those with the II genotype (p = 0.009).
Dr. Vladutiu, at the State University of New York at Buffalo, and Dr. Natelson, at the VA Medical Center in East Orange, New Jersey, point out that the D polymorphism is associated with increased serum ACE activity and increased risk for heart disease, whereas the I allele is associated with enhanced endurance and physical performance.
These findings suggest “an interaction between these genetic polymorphisms and some factor unique to deployment to the Persian Gulf,” such as exposure to battlefield stress.
The authors did not observe a similar pattern when they tested 61 nonveterans with chronic fatigue syndrome and 45 nonveterans without the syndrome. Moreover, the healthy veterans were similar to the healthy nonveterans in allele frequencies of the DCP1 gene.
“If future research finds these abnormalities in veterans deployed to different war zones, differences in distribution of alleles in the ACE gene may be a biological marker for increased risk of war-related illness,” the researchers suggest.
Source: Muscle Nerve 2004;30:38-43. [ Google search on this article ]
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