Gulf War Syndrome (GWS) revisited by local microbiologist
By Medicine Hat News on February 23, 2018.
Submitted by Dr. John Cherwonogrodzky In the early 1990s, Dr. John Cherwonogrodzky, a microbiologist at DRDC-Suffield Research Centre, was asked by the military to test soils from the Persian Gulf. There were hardly any bacteria, but there were a lot of fungi. Also, when supplies were returned from this area, Cherwonogrodzky noticed that the packaging was green with fungus. Around that time, a mysterious illness called Gulf War Syndrome (GWS) was affecting veterans returning from the area. It made him wonder: Was there a connection? Fungi from the soil and packages were sent to the National Centre for Human Mycotic Diseases (Edmonton, Dr. R. Rennie, Director now Professor Emeritus). They identified the fungus, destroyed these (so as to prevent entry into our country), then sent to Cherwonogrodzky replacement samples obtained from Canadian patients. Cherwonogrodzky might have had to screen millions of fungal spores to find any that might cause illness. Now, with those from patients, he was in the ballpark to find if a fungus had anything to do with GWS. By chance that year, Dr. John had been invited to give a talk on vaccines at the Salk Institute in Swiftwater, Pa.). He made a side-trip and, with permits in hand, picked up 28 vials of donated sera from GWS from patients being treated by Dr. Katherine Leisure-Murray (daughter of the 1990 Nobel Prize winner, Dr. Joseph E. Murray). He then had a hard-working summer student, Tzuyung Kou (now a Ph.D, MD, Director for Scripps Labs. and a cancer researcher at Case Western Hospital, USA), who vaccinated mice with killed fungi and used their serum to make a detection system. With GWS patient sera, fungal antigens and a detection system in hand, Cherwonogrodzky had what he needed to test if there was anything noteworthy. Nothing appeared to happen for 12 of the 13 fungi. However, one gave a positive response! For the fungus Chaetomium, 12 of the 28 sera (40 per cent) did have high amounts of antibodies that bound to the fungus. This fungus, commonly found in water-damaged homes and buildings, seldom infects unless the patient has a weakened immunity. Was that the final piece of the puzzle? Doctors and researchers proposed that there were over a dozen different possible causes of GWS. Were they all right? Did these causes weaken the soldiers so that this fungus could invade their bodies? In the early 1990s, Cherwonogrodzky tried to publish this work but GWS was questioned if it even existed as it was confused with other illnesses (e.g. chronic fatigue), and the numbers of sick patients were about the same as for the general population. After he retired, he was curious about GWS and did some reading. He was shocked to learn that the incidence of GWS in veterans had risen to 10 per cent in 2006, 30 per cent in 2013, 44 per cent in 2016 and it might be spreading to their spouses and children. So, he came out of retirement, went to the ASM 2018 Biothreats Conference in Baltimore Feb. 12-14), and presented a poster reviewing his research results which had been first disclosed to the public in a patent (US200220081642A1). Perhaps it was an effort to come out of retirement to do this, but Cherwonogrodzky feels that given what the veterans have sacrificed, where we can help, we should. An added benefit for attending the conference was that he visited with his first summer student (1989), Dr. Monique van Hoek, who is now a Professor at George Mason University in Virginia. 9-8
