Rapid Assessment of Individual Soldier Operational Readiness

Deployed troops experience a wide variety of performance-degrading stressors, including fatigue, depressed nutrition, sustained physical activity, fear, vaccinations, environmental chemicals, and unusual pathogens. The goal of this program is to develop a hierarchical series of molecular biomarkers for the rapid assessment of a soldier's physiological and operational readiness. During Phase I, Rules-Based Medicine (RBM) and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) employed a fluorescence-based microsphere array to perform Multi-Analyte Profiles (MAPs) on individuals before and after a marathon. This approach identified gender-specific biomarker patterns that deviated from an individual's physiological baseline as a response to acute physical stress. The approach also identified a subset of these biomarkers potentially useful for assessing an individual's recovery from the stress. During Phase II, we propose to identify biomarker patterns relative to stressors experienced during military activity. The rate, level and patterns of response to chronic physical stress, to added events of high, acute physical stress, and to added stressors such as heat and dehydration will be studied. It is expected that the physiological criteria obtained from the study may be used to predict performance and recovery in the field. Stress profiles may also be applied to law enforcement personnel, firefighters, athletes and may, in the future, facilitate comparison between stress responses and disease mechanisms.