Gulf War illness (GWI) as a neuroimmune disease.

Gulf War illness (GWI) as a neuroimmune disease. Exp Brain Res. 2017 Jul 31;: Authors: Georgopoulos AP, James LM, Carpenter AF, Engdahl BE, Leuthold AC, Lewis SM Abstract Gulf War illness (GWI) is a chronic disease characterized by the involvement of several organs, including the brain (Christova et al., Exp Brain Res doi: 10.1007/s00221-017-5010-8 , 2017). In a previous study (Georgopoulos et al., J Neural Eng 4:349-355, 2015), we identified six protective alleles from Class II human leukocyte antigen (HLA) genes, and more recently, we investigated the brain correlates of this protection (James et al., EBioMedicine 13:72-79, 2016). Those and other studies (Israeli, Lupus, 21:190-194, 2012) suggested an involvement of the immune system in GWI. In a recent study (Engdahl et al., EBioMedicine doi: 10.1016/j.ebiom.2016.08.030 , 2016), we showed that the brain pattern of synchronous neural interactions (SNI; Georgopoulos et al., J Neural Eng 4:349-355, 2007) in GWI is distinctly different from that in healthy controls. Here we focused on the SNI itself, as a basic measure of neural communication (irrespective of specific connections) and compared it between GWI and seven other diseases that cover a broad spectrum of etiology and pathophysiology. Specifically, we sought to determine which, if any, of those diseases might resemble GWI SNI, overall and within the HLA protective domain, and thus gain further knowledge regarding the nature of...
Source: Experimental Brain Research - Category: Neuroscience Authors: Tags: Exp Brain Res Source Type: research