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Editorial
Beryllium: a paradigm for occupational lung disease and its prevention
  1. Kathleen Kreiss
  1. Correspondence to Dr Kathleen Kreiss, Division of Respiratory Disease Studies, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, Centers for Disease Control, 1095 Willowdale Road, H-2800, Morgantown, West Virginia, WV 26505, USA; kxk2{at}cdc.gov

https://doi.org/10.1136/oemed-2011-100233

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    In this issue of the journal, Van Dyke and colleagues have shown that the supra-typic genetic marker, HLA-DPB1(E69), has an additive and independent contribution with beryllium exposure to cell-mediated beryllium sensitisation and chronic beryllium disease in a cohort at a US nuclear weapons plant.1 This finding of statistical independence between required beryllium exposure and genetic characteristics is quantitatively consistent with an earlier finding in a small beryllia ceramics operation,2 and is extended by a concurrent publication in a second, larger nuclear weapons plant population.3 In the latter case–control study, Van Dyke et al showed that the subset of rare HLA-DPB1(E69) alleles (non-*02), most with greater electronegativity in the antigen-binding groove,4 conferred much higher risk of sensitisation and disease than the more common *02 HLA-DPB1(E69) genotypes: Both sensitisation and chronic beryllium disease risks were equally associated with genotype, but these two health outcomes differed with respect to exposure risk. Cumulative and average lifetime beryllium exposures were associated with chronic beryllium disease but not with beryllium sensitisation. Other recent studies of newly exposed beryllium workers demonstrate that sensitisation often occurs within months of employment, presumably before a beryllium lung burden sufficient for chronic beryllium disease is attained.5–7 Although the Van Dyke paper in this issue did not have sufficient numbers to analyse beryllium sensitisation and beryllium disease cases separately, it showed compatible results, with the beryllium-sensitised cases having much lower indices of beryllium exposure compared with the chronic beryllium disease …

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    Footnotes

    • Linked article: 064220

    • Funding This work was supported by the US National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, with no involvement in study design, collection, analysis and interpretation of data, writing the report or in the decision to submit the paper for publication. The findings and conclusions in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the US National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.

    • Competing interests None.

    • Provenance and peer review Commissioned; internally peer reviewed.

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