Experts tie Agent Orange to blood pressure risk
Findings get vets closer to having government-paid services for ailment
Updated: 6:26 p.m. CT July 27, 2007
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20002410
WASHINGTON - U.S. veterans exposed to the defoliant Agent Orange during the
Vietnam War may face an increased risk of high blood pressure, an expert panel
said on Friday, citing what it called limited but important evidence.
The report by a panel of the U.S. Institute of Medicine was the latest in a
series issued every two years assessing the health effects of exposure to Agent
Orange and other chemicals used as herbicides by the U.S. military in Vietnam.
The panel, which reviewed about 350 epidemiological and animal studies, also
pointed to evidence linking those chemicals to AL amyloidosis, a rare disease in
which protein builds up around organs.
Those findings add both conditions to a list of Agent Orange-linked health
problems that already includes several rare cancers, type II diabetes and birth
defects in the children of the veterans exposed.
The findings may bring veterans one step closer to getting government-paid
medical services for these conditions.
Links are persuasive
The panel said recent studies of Vietnam veterans who handled Agent Orange and
the other defoliants offered evidence that they had elevated rates of high blood
pressure.
The University of Kentucky’s Hollie Swanson and other members of the panel said
the evidence for both of the links is limited or suggestive, but still
persuasive.
“It’s important to know what things might be associated with Agent Orange
exposure, given the number of people exposed. Many of them are in their 60s now,
late 50s,” panel member Richard Fenske of the University of Washington said in a
telephone interview.
“They’re getting to a stage in their lives where certain kinds of diseases may
become evident that may not have been evident in youth,” Fenske added.
Researchers are still trying to understand exactly how toxic contaminants in
these herbicides, particularly the chemical TCDD, cause damage, Swanson said.
The Department of Veterans Affairs must now decide if it will formally recognize
the link between Agent Orange exposure and these conditions, according to Jerry
Manar, an official with the group Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States.
If it does, the report will help hundreds of thousands of veterans get treatment
in VA medical centers for hypertension and associated heart disease and strokes,
Manar said.
“This relieves a huge burden from veterans,” he added.