Brain-Immune Interactions as the Basis of Gulf War Illness: Gulf War Illness Consortium (GWIC)

The primary function of the Gulf War Illness GWIC consortium is to identify the pathobiological mechanisms of Gulf War Illness. The ultimate goal is to discover and characterize biomarkers of Gulf War illness and then identify targeted treatment strategies. The GWIC allows for the development of multidisciplinary collaborations targeting suspected brain-immune signaling alterations in GWI. The GWIC consortium central hypothesis identifies chronic neuroinflammation as an end result of initial glial activation and subsequent priming of glial responses that cause a chronic activation loop of stronger and longer proinflammatory signaling effects between the immune system and the brain. The GWIC includes both clinical human and preclinical animal and cell studies and researchers in the 10 funded sub-studies. These studies are incorporating sufficient overlap of scientific content area to inform each other in a bench-to-bedside-to-bench approach. Results to date from the preclinical animal studies suggest a strong neuroinflammatory component to the illness model and provide leads for treatment development approaches in the animal model before translation to the clinic. Final institutional review approval for clinical studies has recently been obtained and recruitment for clinical studies will begin shortly.