{"id":76130,"date":"2017-11-23T09:00:20","date_gmt":"2017-11-23T14:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=76130"},"modified":"2017-11-23T07:26:47","modified_gmt":"2017-11-23T12:26:47","slug":"some-vietnam-vets-infected-with-liver-flukes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=76130","title":{"rendered":"Some Vietnam vets infected with liver flukes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A number of folks have sent links to the news that many Vietnam veterans brought back parasites from their tour. From <a href=\"http:\/\/connectingvets.com\/2017\/11\/21\/an-infestation-may-be-the-cause-of-illness-for-some-vietnam-veterans\/\">Connecting Vets<\/a>;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The Department of Veterans Affairs this spring commissioned a small pilot study to look into the link between liver flukes ingested through raw or undercooked fish and a rare bile duct cancer. It can take decades for symptoms to appear. By then, patients are often in tremendous pain, with just a few months to live.<\/p>\n<p>Of the 50 blood samples submitted, more than 20 percent came back positive or bordering positive for liver fluke antibodies, said Sung-Tae Hong, the tropical medicine specialist who carried out the tests at Seoul National University in South Korea.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>Gerry Wiggins, who served in Vietnam from 1968 to 1969, has already lost friends to the disease. He was among those who got the call.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI was in a state of shock,\u201d he said. \u201cI didn\u2019t think it would be me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The 69-year-old, who lives in Port Jefferson Station, New York, didn\u2019t have any symptoms when he agreed to take part in the study, but hoped his participation could help save lives. He immediately scheduled further tests, discovering he had two cysts on his bile duct, which had the potential to develop into the cancer, known as cholangiocarcinoma. They have since been removed and \u2014 for now \u2014 he\u2019s doing well.<\/p>\n<p>Though rarely found in Americans, the parasites infect an estimated 25 million people worldwide.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>If you spent any time in a river or creek while you were in country over there, you should probably go get it checked out.<\/p>\n<p>From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/health\/2017\/11\/22\/va-study-shows-parasite-from-vietnam-may-be-killing-vets.html\">Fox News<\/a>;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The reporting found that about 700 veterans with cholangiocarcinoma have been seen by the VA in the past 15 years. Less than half of them submitted claims for service-related benefits, mostly because they were not aware of a possible connection to Vietnam. The VA rejected 80 percent of the requests, but decisions often appeared to be haphazard or contradictory, depending on what desks they landed on, the AP found.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A number of folks have sent links to the news that many Vietnam veterans brought back &hellip; <a title=\"Some Vietnam vets infected with liver flukes\" class=\"hm-read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=76130\"><span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Some Vietnam vets infected with liver flukes<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[86],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-veteran-health-care"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=76130"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76130\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=76130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=76130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=76130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}