Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
New Scans Show 'Something Happened To The Brain' Of Diplomats Who Were Stationed In Cuba But Mystery Remains
In late 2016, dozens of United States diplomats working in Cuba and China began reporting odd mental symptoms: persistent headaches, vertigo, blurred vision, hearing phantom sounds. Since then, scientists and commentators have groped for plausible explanations. Deliberate physical attacks, involving microwaves or other such technology? Or were psychological factors, subconscious yet mind-altering, the more likely cause? The strangeness of the symptoms, and the spookiness of the proposed causes, have given the story a life of its own in the diplomatic corps, the Pentagon and in assorted pockets of the internet where conspiracy theories thrive. (Carey, 7/23)
Advanced brain scans of U.S. Embassy employees who reported falling ill while serving in Havana revealed significant differences from a control group, according to a new study published on Tuesday. The finding does little, however, to resolve the cause of a string of mysterious health incidents that led the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump to withdraw many personnel from Cuba. (7/23)
Given the workers’ reported symptoms — balance problems, sleep and thinking difficulties, headaches and other complaints — the researchers had expected the cerebellum, near the brain stem, to be affected. But they also found unique patterns in tissue connecting brain regions. (Tanner, 7/23)
Differences in connectivity were also observed in the brain's auditory and visuospatial areas, according to the study. However, the authors note that the clinical importance of these findings is uncertain, and they didn't have earlier MRIs of the patients to compare what their brains looked like before the incidents. (Nedelman and Azad, 7/23)
But those differences "do not reflect the imaging differences that we see in [traumatic brain injury] or concussion," Verma says. "All you can say is something happened, which caused their brain to change," she says. And even that conclusion was challenged by brain scientists who have been skeptical that any diplomat was attacked or injured from what became known as "Havana syndrome." (Hamilton, 7/23)
