Everitt B, Ismail K, David A S, Wessely S
Department of Biostatistics, Institute of Psychiatry, Guy's, King's and St Thomas' School of Medicine, London.
Psychol Med. 2002 Nov;32(8):1371-8. doi: 10.1017/s0033291702006311.
Gulf veterans report medically unexplained symptoms more frequently than non-Gulf veterans did. We examined whether Gulf and non-Gulf veterans could be distinguished by their patterns of symptom reporting.
A k-means cluster analysis was applied to 500 randomly sampled veterans from each of three United Kingdom military cohorts of veterans; those deployed to the Gulf conflict between 1990 and 1991; to the Bosnia peacekeeping mission between 1992 and 1997; and military personnel who were in active service but not deployed to the Gulf (Era). Sociodemographic, health variables and scores for ten symptom groups were calculated.
The gap statistic indicated the five-group solution as one that provided a particularly informative description of the structure in the data. Cluster 1 consisted of low scores for all symptom groups. Cluster 2 had veterans with highest symptom scores for musculoskeletal symptoms and high scores for psychiatric symptoms. Cluster 3 had high scores for psychiatric symptoms and marginally elevated scores for the remaining nine groups symptom groups. Cluster 4 had elevated scores for musculoskeletal symptoms only and cluster 5 was distinguishable from the other clusters in having high scores in all symptom groups, especially psychiatric and musculoskeletal.
The findings do not support the existence of a unique syndrome affecting a subgroup of Gulf veterans but emphasize the excess of non-specific self-reported ill health in this group.
海湾地区退伍军人报告医学上无法解释的症状的频率高于非海湾地区退伍军人。我们研究了海湾地区和非海湾地区退伍军人是否可以通过他们的症状报告模式来区分。
对来自英国三个退伍军人队列中的每个队列随机抽取的500名退伍军人进行k均值聚类分析；这些队列包括：1990年至1991年被部署到海湾冲突地区的；1992年至1997年被部署到波斯尼亚维和任务的；以及现役但未被部署到海湾地区的军事人员（时代组）。计算了社会人口统计学、健康变量以及十个症状组的得分。
间隙统计量表明五组解决方案能够特别有效地描述数据结构。第1组所有症状组得分都低。第2组的退伍军人肌肉骨骼症状得分最高，精神症状得分也高。第3组精神症状得分高，其余九个症状组得分略有升高。第4组仅肌肉骨骼症状得分升高，第5组与其他组不同，所有症状组得分都高，尤其是精神和肌肉骨骼症状。
研究结果不支持存在一种影响部分海湾地区退伍军人的独特综合征，但强调了该群体中自我报告的非特异性健康问题过多。
