Mystery remains for Gulf War veterans.

• Position: Lou Gehrig's Disease

Researchers from the University of Cincinnati (Ohio) and the Durham (N.C.) Veterans Administration Medical Center are hoping to find a geographical pattern to help explain why 1991 Gulf War veterans contracted the fatal neurological disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) at twice the normal rate during the decade after the conflict. By layering military records of troops onto Gulf-area maps, it was discovered that there were some areas of service where there appears to be an elevated risk.

Also known as Lou Gehrig's Disease because it crippled and ultimately killed that baseball great in 1941, ALS causes cellular degeneration in the central nervous system. Its cause is unknown.

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"There are no reports on the occurrence of ALS among veterans of other conflicts," the researchers write. "There is only a single report that suggests ALS may arise from environmental exposures associated with military service, per se." The new cases assessed by the researchers occurred within a group of people who were expected to be at low risk for ALS, because they mostly were under the age of 45.

The report's senior author is Ronnie Homer, professor and director of the department of public health at Cincinnati, who led research that first documented twice-normal ALS rates among vets of the first Persian Gulf War. Homer's group now is assessing possible exposures vets might have had in the Gulf region that could explain the higher ALS rates its 2003 study found.

"As one of the largest contemporary sets of cases, it presents a real opportunity to identify clues as to the cause of ALS, not only for veterans of the first Gulf...