38 U.S.C. § 1153
Section 1153 · Aggravation
Amended 3 times on record
Applied in 58 court decisions — leading case Caluza v. Brown (1995)
Most recently applied in Amezquita v. Collins (May 2025)
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year.Markers show enactment, consequential amendments, and circuit splits over this section — watch for a citation surge after a change or a disagreement. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
A preexisting injury or disease will be considered to have been aggravated by active military, naval, air, or space service, where there is an increase in disability during such service, unless there is a specific finding that the increase in disability is due to the natural progress of the disease.
Editorial notes U.S. Code · Office of the Law Revision Counsel
Editorial Notes
Amendments
2021—Pub. L. 116–283 substituted "air, or space service" for "or air service".
1991—Pub. L. 102–83 renumbered section 353 of this title as this section.