Neurological Illness and National Security

In 2016, a set of troubling neurological symptoms was reported through confidential channels by US government personnel based at the US Embassy in Havana, Cuba. As the number of cases in Havana escalated and then similar cases occurred over the next 5 years in other locations around the globe, efforts to understand this syndrome, now known as anomalous health incidents (AHIs), were hampered by their unusual features, incomplete information, nonstandardized clinical testing, delayed reporting, and the sensitive nature of the circumstances, individuals, and their work. A subset of individuals described the abrupt onset, sometimes in the middle of the night, of a loud, grinding, clicking, buzzing, or high-pitched piercing sound inside the head, occasionally likened to a slide whistle, and a sensation of pressure, sometimes in one ear, on one side of the head, or in the face or chest. Most strikingly, these phenomena often displayed strong location dependence, in that they quickly dissipated when the individuals vacated their initial location, and then returned when the location was revisited. In some cases, this location dependence was reported to occur repeatedly by the same individual or by multiple individuals as they moved away from and then returned within minutes to a specific location, such as part of a room. These abrupt-onset sensory phenomena were followed by a mix of vertigo, dizziness, imbalance, blurry vision, tinnitus, headache, nausea, and cognitive dysfunction, s...
Source: JAMA - Journal of the American Medical Association - Category: General Medicine Source Type: research