- Research Tracker
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- Gulf War Illness: state of the evidence 2026
Summary
Literature indexed in 2026
The Gulf War Illness feed holds 21 PubMed records with a 2026 publication date (21 unique PMIDs) out of 75 records in the feed, drawn from 19 distinct journals. This is a moderate sample.
Top journals
Browse the live feed: Gulf War Illness research tracker. Weekly changes are in the research digest.
Clinical trials
3 of the 629 ClinicalTrials.gov records in the tracker snapshot (taken 2026-10-07) match Gulf War Illness (3 via keyword match). 0 are recruiting, not yet recruiting, enrolling by invitation or active; 0 list a 2026 start date and 0 had their registry record updated in 2026. Median planned or actual enrollment is 29 participants (2 trials report a figure).
By status
By phase
By sponsor type
Agents under investigation
| Agent | Trials | Of which active |
|---|---|---|
| Reiki | 1 | 0 |
| Acupressure Treatment. | 1 | 0 |
| Nasal Cpap Treatment During Sleep | 1 | 0 |
| Graded Dobutamine Infusions | 1 | 0 |
| Psychosocial Challenge Involving Socioevaluative Public Speaking | 1 | 0 |
| Graded Phenylephrine Injections | 1 | 0 |
All tracked trials: clinical trials tracker.
Therapeutic agents catalogue
The OSMF therapeutic-agents catalogue lists 3 agents with Gulf War Illness as a primary condition (of 605 agents overall). Evidence level is the catalogue's own coarse grading, assigned automatically from the number and type of linked studies and trials; it is not a GRADE assessment.
Browse: therapeutics atlas and agents.
Biomarkers catalogued
The Gulf War Illness biomarker atlas (last edited 2026-06-29) holds 41 marker entries across 8 categories, citing 5 distinct DOIs: 17 reported elevated, 9 reduced and 15 with mixed or inconsistent findings. Direction is relative to the comparison group in the cited source (usually healthy controls) and a single entry can rest on one study.
| Category | Elevated | Reduced | Mixed | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Inflammatory | 8 | 0 | 2 | 10 |
| Metabolic | 4 | 3 | 1 | 8 |
| Exposure | 1 | 1 | 5 | 7 |
| Autoimmune | 3 | 0 | 2 | 5 |
| Neurological | 0 | 0 | 4 | 4 |
| Functional | 0 | 2 | 1 | 3 |
| Autonomic | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2 |
| Ocular | 0 | 2 | 0 | 2 |
Full atlas: Gulf War Illness biomarker atlas.
Research cohorts
No cohorts in the PAIS cohort database (32 cohorts) are tagged with this condition.
Methods
This page was generated by scripts/build_reports.py on 7 October 2026 from the data snapshot described below. No number is entered by hand.
- Studies. Records in
data/gulf-war-illness.json(source: PubMed (NCBI); feed last updated 2026-07-09) whosepub_dateparses to a date in 2026. Year-only or year-month dates are mapped to the first day of the period. 0 record(s) had no parseable date and were excluded. Monthly counts bin by publication month; journal counts use the record's journal string verbatim (no normalisation of abbreviations). - Trials. Records in
data/clinical_trials/clinical_trials_current.json(snapshot 2026-10-07). A trial matches when itsmapped_conditionscontains no curated label (none defined), or when its title or raw condition list matches the pattern(s) /gulf[- ]war/i. Status, phase and sponsor type are the registry's own fields, counted once per trial. "Started in 2026" usesstart_date; "updated in 2026" useslast_updated. Agents are the tracker's normalised intervention names; a trial with several agents counts once for each. Median enrollment uses the registryenrollmentfield (actual or estimated) where numeric. - Agents catalogue. Entries in
data/therapeutic_agents.json(updated 2026-10-07) whose "Primary Conditions" includes 'Gulf War Illness', grouped by the catalogue's "Evidence Level" string. - Biomarkers. Entries in
data/biomarkers/gulf-war-illness.json, grouped bycategoryanddirection(up, down, mixed). Distinct DOIs count uniquereference.doivalues. - Cohorts. Entries in
data/pais-cohorts-index.json(version 2.0.0-seed) whosepathogen_idis in ['gulf-war-exposures'].
Limitations
- The literature feed is a bounded, rolling PubMed query result. It captures recent indexing activity, not the full year, and PubMed indexing dates lag print publication. Counts here will not match a systematic search.
- Study counts measure volume, not quality. No screening for study design, sample size, peer-review status or relevance beyond the search query was applied.
- Trial matching depends on the tracker's condition mapping and keyword patterns; trials registered under umbrella terms (for example "post-viral fatigue") may be missed, and registry status fields are frequently stale.
- Biomarker direction reflects what each cited source reported, often from a single cohort; "elevated" in one study does not imply replication.
- The cohort database and agents catalogue are curated and incomplete, and the evidence-level grading is automatic and coarse.
- Different sections rest on different snapshot dates (feed 2026-07-09, trials 2026-10-07, biomarkers 2026-06-29, agents 2026-10-07).
- This is a year-to-date report; it is regenerated daily and will change until 31 December 2026.
Download the data
All inputs are public JSON files in the research-tracker repository, licensed for reuse with attribution.
- Gulf War Illness literature feed (/data/gulf-war-illness.json)
- Clinical trials snapshot (all conditions) (/data/clinical_trials/clinical_trials_current.json)
- Gulf War Illness biomarker atlas (/data/biomarkers/gulf-war-illness.json)
- Therapeutic agents catalogue (/data/therapeutic_agents.json)
- PAIS cohort database index (/data/pais-cohorts-index.json)
- The computed numbers behind this report (/reports/data/gulf-war-illness-2026.json)
Suggested citation
For a stable reference, cite the generation date shown; the page is regenerated as data arrive. Weekly updates: subscribe on Substack or follow the digest RSS feed.