Development and Validation of the Veteran Military Occupational and Environmental Exposure Assessment Tool.

Introduction: Military exposures may present a cumulative load and increased individual susceptibility to negative health outcomes. Currently, there are no comprehensive and validated environmental exposure assessment tools covering the full spectrum of occupational and environmental exposures for Veterans. The Veterans Affairs (VA) War Related Illness and Injury Study Center in Washington, DC, developed the Veteran Military Occupational and Environmental Exposure Assessment Tool (VMOAT) to establish a structured, comprehensive self-report tool that captures military and non-military occupational and environmental exposures.

Investigating a clinically informed sleep disturbance threshold for physical and mental health among Gulf War Illness veterans.

Study Objectives: This study (1) assessed sleep quality and health in Gulf War veterans (GWV) meeting the Gulf War Illness (GWI) criteria and (2) compared health associations for both those meeting a "clinically disturbed sleep" threshold, and those below, as determined by the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) cutoff for military populations (≥10) on measures of physical, mental, and cognitive health.

Methods: Participant data consisted of questionnaires and assessments completed prior to group assignment in a clinical trial. The sample consisted of 147 GWV, where 81.

Gulf War Illness: A Randomized Controlled Trial Combining Mindfulness Meditation and Auricular Acupuncture.

Background: Many Gulf War (GW) Veterans report chronic symptoms including pain, fatigue, and cognitive impairment, commonly defined as Gulf War Illness (GWI). Complementary and integrative health (CIH) therapies may potentially improve multiple symptoms of GWI.

Objective: To examine the effectiveness of combining 2 commonly available CIH therapies, mindfulness meditation and auricular acupuncture, in improving health-related functioning and multiple symptom domains of GWI (e.

Compounding Effects of Traumatic Brain Injury, Military Status, and Other Factors on Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index: A Meta-analysis.

Introduction: Traumatic brain injury (TBI) or concussion is a known risk factor for multiple adverse health outcomes, including disturbed sleep. Although prior studies show adverse effects of TBI on sleep quality, its compounding effect with other factors on sleep is unknown. This meta-analysis aimed to quantify the effects of TBI on subjective sleep quality in the context of military status and other demographic factors.

The relationship between Gulf War Illness symptom severity and heart rate variability: A pilot study.

Introduction: Gulf War Illness (GWI) is a chronic multisymptom illness affecting 250,000+ veterans of the '90-'91 Gulf War which remains under-explored in terms of its physiological characteristics. We investigated whether subjective GWI symptom severity scores were related to objective measures of autonomic nervous system activity.

Methods: We estimated activity in the two major branches of the autonomic nervous system (the parasympathetic nervous system [PNS] and the sympathetic nervous system [SNS]) via metrics of heart rate variability in a sample of Veterans who met established criteria for GWI with varying degrees of self-reported symptom severity.