Agent Orange and Diabetes

The DoD released the latest report of the Air Force Health Study on the health effects of exposure to herbicides in Vietnam, which includes the strongest evidence to date that Agent Orange is associated with adult-onset diabetes. This supports the findings from earlier reports in 1992 and 1997. The Air Force Health Study summarizes the results of the 2002 physical examination of 1,951 veterans, which is the final examination of the 20-year epidemiological study. The Ranch Hand Study was named after the operation responsible for spraying herbicides in Vietnam between 1962 and 1971 to deny cover and destroy crops of the North Vietnamese Army. Since the first examination in 1982, the Air Force has tried to determine whether long-term health effects exist in the Ranch Hand pilots and ground crews, and if these effects can be attributed to the herbicidesused in Vietnam, mainly Agent Orange and its contaminant, dioxin. The report, along with many other studies on herbicide and dioxin exposure, will be reviewed by the National Academy of Sciences. Based upon this review, the Secretary of Veterans Affairs can askCongress for legislation on disability compensation and health care. Results from the 2002 physical examination support adult-onset Diabetes as the most important health problem seen in the Air Force Health Study.

The report emphasizes three major limitations to the study. First, the results cannot be generalized to other groups, such as all Vietnam veterans or Vietnamese civilians, which have been exposed in different ways and to different levels of herbicide. Second, the size of the study makes it difficult to detect increases in rare diseases, thus small increases in rare diseases may be missed by the study. Third, other variables that were not considered
in this report could be confounding factors influencing the results. The report is available on the Air Force Health Study Web site at:
www.brooks.af.mil/AFRL/HED/hedb/default.html