Chest
Occupational and Environmental Lung DiseaseUtility of Antibody in Identifying Individuals Who Have or Will Develop Anhydride-induced Respiratory Disease
Section snippets
Study Population
The subjects of the study population consisted of 181 employees of Amoco Corporation at a facility that manufactures TMA. Of these subjects, 119 were followed longitudinally for the subsequent 5 years.
Exposure
An exposure class was assigned to each subject by an industrial hygienist at the manufacturing facility. This assignment of class was based on personal monitoring of representative subjects in each exposure class and a detailed knowledge of each job category. The exposure classification was ranked
Study Population
The demographic, clinical, exposure, and serologic data collected on this study population of 181 subjects are summarized in Table 1. The mean age was 41 years (range, 20 to 67 years). All but 20 were male; 14 were nonwhite and 168 were white. The proportions of smokers, exsmokers, and nonsmokers were similar. In terms of exposure classification, most were in the lower exposure classes. Sixteen had specific IgE at a level high enough to cause disease (1:10), whereas 44 had specific IgG at a
DISCUSSION
Acid anhydrides have been known to cause immunologically mediated asthma for more than 2 decades.10, 11 New acid anhydrides causing asthma continue to be reported,12, 13 and new anhydride-induced IgG-mediated respiratory disease has also been described.14
It is well recognized that development of either IgE or IgG antibody to a variety of occupational antigens is not necessarily associated with disease.10, 15 We have reported the predictive value, sensitivity, and specificity of IgG and IgE
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2006, Revue des Maladies RespiratoiresOccupational exposures as triggers of asthma
2005, Immunology and Allergy Clinics of North AmericaOccupational hypersensitivity pneumonitis
2005, EMC - Toxicologie-PathologieDiseases of the Lung and Pleura
2005, Textbook of Clinical Occupational and Environmental MedicineDifferential diagnosis of occupational asthma
2003, Immunology and Allergy Clinics of North America
Supported by the Ernest S. Bazley Grant to Northwestern Memorial Hospital and Northwestern University Medical School and Amoco Corporation
Reprints of the pulmonary disease prevention survey results may be requested through the corresponding author