"The fear of discovering a massive war syndrome among American troops returning from Iraq was the cause of Pentagon's postponement of routine brain screening among American soldiers for mild brain injuries.
Col. Kenneth Cox, head of Pentagon's medical assessment division, explained the Department of Defense delayed the conduct of brain screenings to steer clear of another potential Gulf War syndrome discovered among American soldiers in the 1990s."
On the bright side, the DOD has granted significant funds to researchers studying Mild TBI:
The Department of Defense has awarded a consortium of Houston institutions a $33 million grant to investigate mild traumatic brain injury, or concussion, the potential severity of which has long been underappreciated.
The grant, an unusually large amount for the government, targets better understanding and treatment of the injury that afflicts about 1.5 million Americans a year and is considered one of the Iraq war's signature wounds.
Valadka said one emphasis of the research will be to determine if the mild traumatic brain injury suffered in blast explosions is similar to such civilian injuries. If so, the research will have great applicability, he said.
However, the project will not end until 2013, so it willbe a long while before these efforts translate into results.
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