Cognitive functioning in Gulf War illness

A comprehensive neuropsychological battery was administered to 48 veterans with Gulf War Illness (GWI) characterized by severe fatigue (GV-F) and 39 h ealthy veterans (GV-H). Subjects were matched on intelligence and did not d iffer on age, gender, race, and alcohol consumption. Compared to GVs-H, GVs -F were significantly impaired on four tasks: three attention, concentratio n, information processing tasks and one measure of abstraction and conceptu alization. After considering the presence of post-war Axis I psychopatholog y, GWI remained a significant predictor of cognitive performance on one of the attention, concentration, and information processing tasks and one abst raction and conceptualization measure. Performance on the remaining two att ention, concentration, and information processing tasks was only significan tly predicted by Axis I psychopathology with post-war onset. The results su ggest that Gulf War Illness is associated with some aspects of cognitive dy sfunction in Gulf Veterans, over and above the contribution of psychopathol ogy.