Saturday, January 22, 2011

Rare type of pneumonia infecting troops

LANDSTUHL, Germany — Military doctors are seeing a resurgence of a rare and sometimes fatal type of pneumonia that is striking young troops who started smoking while deployed downrange.
In the past five months, six U.S. servicemembers serving in Central Command’s area of responsibility have been diagnosed with acute eosinophilic pneumonia, or AEP. While the exact cause of the illness is unknown, 27 of the 36 troops who have contracted AEP since March 2003 had recently picked up the habit, according to a July 2008 information paper from the Army’s Center for Health Promotion and Preventive Medicine.

Read the entire story here.

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