Kaundinya Gopinath1, 2, Saurabh Vaidya2, Sandeepkumar Ganji2, Sergey Cheshkov2, Robert Haley3, Richard Briggs2, 3
1Department of Radiology & Imaging Sciences, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, United States; 2Department of Radiology, UT Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX, United States; 3Department of Internal Medicine, UT Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX, United States
Gulf War Illness (GWI) is a multi-symptom disorder characterized by cognition, emotion and sensory deficits. This study used a multi-slice multi-echo T2-mapping sequence to examine WM integrity in GWI veterans with Syndromes1 (Syn1), Syn2 and Syn3, and age-matched controls. The control groups WM T2s were similar to those observed in T2 relaxometry studies of intact WM. Syn2 and Syn3 groups exhibited WM impairment in the form of increased T2 relaxation times compared to controls, in important WM areas such as the cholinergic pathway which serve a number of cognitive functions. Thus WM impairment could be an important marker for GWI.