Symptoms, ill-health and quality of life of the members of a Porton Down veterans' support group

Symptoms, ill-health and quality of life of the members of a Porton Down veterans' support group

Allender, Steven, Maconochie, Noreen, Keegan, Thomas, Brooks, Claire, Fletcher, Tony, Nieuwenhuijsen, Mark J., Doyle, Pat, Carpenter, Lucy M. and Venables, Katherine M. 2006, Symptoms, ill-health and quality of life of the members of a Porton Down veterans' support group, Occupational medicine, vol. 56, no. 5, pp. 329-337.

Title	Symptoms, ill-health and quality of life of the members of a Porton Down veterans' support group
Alternative title	Symptoms, ill-health and quality of life in a support group of Porton Down veterans
Author(s)	Allender, Steven Maconochie, Noreen Keegan, Thomas Brooks, Claire Fletcher, Tony Nieuwenhuijsen, Mark J. Doyle, Pat Carpenter, Lucy M. Venables, Katherine M.
Journal name	Occupational medicine
Volume number	56
Issue number	5
Start page	329
End page	337
Publisher	Oxford University Press
Place of publication	Oxford, England
Publication date	2006-08
ISSN	0962-7480 1471-8405
Keyword(s)	Chemical warfare agents quality of life symptoms veterans
Summary	Background There has been a Human Volunteer Programme at the British chemical weapons research facility at Porton Down since the First World War, in which some of the participants were exposed to chemical warfare agents. Aim To identify any striking specific morbidity patterns in members of the Porton Down Veterans Support Group (PDVSG). Methods A self-completed postal questionnaire was prepared including health immediately after the visits to Porton Down, subsequent diagnoses and hospital admissions, symptoms in, and after, the first 5 years after the visits, fatigue symptoms and current quality of life, measured using the SF-36. Results Responses were received from 289 of 436 (66%). Results reported here relate to 269 male respondents of mean age 66.8 years. Sixty-six per cent reported their first visit to Porton Down in the 1950s. The most common diagnoses or hospital admissions reported were diseases of the circulatory system. In the first 5 years after their visits the most common symptoms were headache, irritability or outbursts of anger and feeling un-refreshed after sleep. In the later period, most common symptoms were fatigue, feeling un-refreshed after sleep and sleeping difficulties. Sixty-five per cent met the definition for a case of ‘fatigue’. Current quality of life dimensions were consistently lower than age-specific estimates from general population samples. Conclusions Members of the PDVSG responding to this survey reported poorer quality of life than the general population. Despite there being no clear pattern of specific morbidities, we cannot rule out ill-health being potentially associated with past experience at Porton Down
Notes	Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society of Occupational Medicine.
Language	eng
Field of Research	111799 Public Health and Health Services not elsewhere classified
HERDC Research category	C1.1 Refereed article in a scholarly journal
Copyright notice	©2006, The Author
Persistent URL	http://hdl.handle.net/10536/DRO/DU:30020458

Document type:	Journal Article
Collection:	Public Health Research, Evaluation, and Policy Cluster

Citation counts:	Cited 6 times in TR Web of Science Cited 6 times in Scopus
Access Statistics:	333 Abstract Views - Detailed Statistics
Created:	Tue, 13 Oct 2009, 15:40:20 EST

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