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Agent Orange linked to blood pressure
Published in The Age Newspaper, July 29th 2007.
"WAR veterans exposed to the defoliant Agent Orange during
the Vietnam War may face increased risk of high blood pressure, an expert panel
has warned.
Citing what it called limited but important evidence, a
report was issued by a panel of the US Institute of Medicine.
It was the latest in a series issued every two years
assessing the health effects of exposure to Agent Orange and other chemicals
used in Vietnam.
The panel said recent studies of Vietnam veterans offered evidence
that Agent Orange caused elevated rates of high blood pressure.
The panel, which reviewed about 350 epidemiological and
animal studies, also pointed to evidence linking the chemicals to AL
amyloidosis, a rare disease in which protein builds up around organs.
Agent Orange has already been linked to health problems
including several rare cancers, type II diabetes and birth defects in the
children of the veterans exposed.
The new findings may bring veterans one step closer to
getting government-paid medical services for these conditions.
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 was 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.
"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."
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.”
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