Cuba has dismissed the findings of a US academic study which found brain abnormalities in US diplomats who worked in Cuba.
The research follows accusations by the US that Cuba carried out “sonic attacks”, after several diplomats complained of unexplained symptoms including dizziness and hearing loss.
The study’s authors said brain scans showed the diplomats’ symptoms were “not imagined”.
But Cuba said the results were unclear.
The study was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association and was led by professors at the University of Pennsylvania.
Researchers took MRI scans of 44 US diplomats and family members who had been stationed in Cuba and compared them to a control group of healthy volunteers.
The authors said the diplomats showed less white matter which could affect the brain’s ability to send messages as well as other changes affecting auditory and spatial functions.
Ragini Verma, one of the study’s co-authors, said the scans had shown “something happened to the brains” of the diplomats.
“Whatever happened was not due to a pre-existing condition, because we test for that,” Prof Verma added. “It’s not imagined, all I can say is that there is truth to be found.”
Late in 2016, staff at the US embassy in Havana and some of their relatives started complaining about symptoms ranging from dizziness, loss of balance, hearing loss, anxiety and something they described as “cognitive fog”.
The US said two dozen of its staff members plus some of their family members had been affected by “auditory sensations” in 2017. The US government recalled most of its diplomatic personnel from Cuba in response.
The US state department sent 44 of those who had reported symptoms to the University of Pennsylvania’s brain trauma centre for MRI scans.
The study published on Tuesday is based on those scans.
The US government has never officially spoken about what they think the cause of the unusual symptoms could be.
US media have speculated they could be the result of an attack with a covert sonic weapon. But Canada, which also cut its embassy staff in Cuba after at least 14 of its citizens reported symptoms, has discounted the idea of a “sonic attack” being the cause.
The study published on Tuesday does not draw any conclusions about the cause of the symptoms either.
