Original Articles: Asthma, Lower Airway DiseasesEvaluation of cleaning activities on respiratory symptoms in asthmatic female homemakers
Section snippets
INTRODUCTION
Asthma is a chronic inflammatory lung disease that affects approximately 20 million individuals in the United States, but asthma mortality rates are higher among women compared with men.1, 2 This alarming statistic makes asthma an important women's health issue.3 Data from surveillance registries in many countries have identified cleaning as being strongly associated with a cause for workplace-related asthma.4 The third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey reported that hospital
Study Design and Participant Recruitment
This parallel-group, longitudinal pilot study was designed to generate data to determine the health effects of household cleaning in asthmatic vs nonasthmatic women. Twenty-five women with asthma (forced expiratory volume in 1 second [FEV1] ≥60%) and 25 without asthma, between the ages of 18 and 65 years, were recruited from a clinical allergy practice. A prescreening questionnaire was used to identify women with mild to moderate persistent asthma who were the primary household cleaner for the
RESULTS
Table 1 summarizes demographic characteristics and baseline information of patients in the asthma and nonasthma groups. The mean ages of patients in the asthma and nonasthma groups were 49.6 and 45.7 years, respectively. Patients were predominantly white (92%) in the asthma group compared with the nonasthma group (63%) (P = .02). The presence of having a clinical diagnosis of allergic and/or nonallergic rhinitis and atopic status, defined as producing specific IgE antibodies to environmental
DISCUSSION
This prospective pilot study investigating the health effects experienced by women who clean their homes demonstrated increased lower respiratory tract symptoms during cleaning in asthmatic women compared with nonasthmatic women in the absence of significant changes in PEFR. The increased occurrence of lower respiratory tract symptoms in the asthma group without significant changes in PEFR emphasizes the known discrepancy between symptoms and objective changes in lung function. Several studies15
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Disclosures: Authors have nothing to disclose.
Funding Sources: This study was funded by the CHEST Foundation Women's Health Initiative Award.