EDUCATION

Baker's asthma

Jonas Brisman

Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Dr Jonas Brisman, Department of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, Sahlgrenska University Hospital, S:t Sigfridsgatan 85, SE-412 66 Göteborg, Sweden;
jonas.brisman@ymk.gu.se

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Baker's asthma is one of the most common forms of occupational asthma. The increasing knowledge in exposure–response relations accumulated in recent years is important in the understanding of baker's asthma. This development has made scientifically based prevention feasible today and baker's asthma should not be regarded as an inevitable occurrence any more.

In 1700 Bernardo Ramazzini described respiratory symptoms among bakers caused by exposure to flour dust. However, there are anecdotal references from antiquity describing how Roman slaves working in bakeries protected themselves by using cloth as a primitive respirator to cover their faces because their breathing suffered from inhaling flour.

CLINICAL PICTURE

Case reports from the beginning of the 20th century established the concept of baker's asthma as an allergic disease because of the observed combination of positive skin tests to flour extracts and respiratory symptoms suggestive of asthma. The aetiological role of sensitisation to flour in these cases was confirmed . . . [Full text of this article]

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