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Nerve Agent Exposure > Follow-up Author: Elliot Rodriguez, MD, FACEP; Christine M. Stork, PharmD, DABAT
Editorial changes - 2009-12-01
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Rationale:

  • Physical and psychological symptoms may persist for years after nerve agent exposure.
  • Patients may have chronic symptoms due to hypoxic encephalopathy caused by nerve agent-induced respiratory insufficiency.
  • In other patients, the cause of these chronic physical complaints is unclear but patients who continued to have symptoms had lower erythrocyte cholinesterase activity levels at 4 weeks after exposure than those who did not.

Evidence:

  • Long-term cohort studies of victims of sarin exposure both in Tokyo and Matsumoto show persistence of physical and neurobehavioral symptoms in a few patients for up to 3 to 5 years (41; 42).
  • In a case-control study of 3219 Gulf War veterans, certain self-reported symptoms were significantly higher in veterans possibly exposed to sarin (43).

Comments:

  • None.
FAQs
Christine M. Stork, PharmD, DABAT has no financial relationships with pharmaceutical companies, biomedical device manufacturers, or health-care related organizations. Elliot Rodriguez, MD, FACEP has no financial relationships with pharmaceutical companies, biomedical device manufacturers, or health-care related organizations. Jerrold B. Leikin, MD, editorial consultant, received royalties from McGraw-Hill, Taylor and Francis; editor of Toxicoterrorism (McGraw-Hill).
Darren B. Taichman, MD, PhD, Editor, PIER, has received grant support from Actelion Pharmaceuticals Ltd , and honoraria for continuing medical education grand rounds and lectures given.

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