Background: Exposure to biomass fuel combustion increases respiratory symptoms. Objective: To determine an exposure index value that could be used as a predictor for respiratory symptoms in adult population exposed to biomass fuel combustion. Methods and materials: We performed a respiratory questionnaire to 80 highlanders chronically exposed to biomass fuel combustion from 3 rural communities aged between 18 and 94 years. Exposure index in hour−years was used to express exposure; ROC curve was obtained by grouping index values according to presence of symptoms and determined the best cutoff. Results: 41.25% were males and 58.75% were females, with similar age between them. Women had higher exposure index (111.6 vs. 79.5 hour−years, p=0.049) and started exposure at lower age (8.2 vs. 10.21 years, p=0.009). The area under ROC curve vas 0.693 (95% CI=0.579 to 0.808) with 69.3% of random possibility to be adequately classified as having symptoms or not. Significance was 0.004. A 64 hour−years cutoff led to 88.4% sensitivity and 60.4% specificity for predicting symptoms. Those with index above cutoff presented more frequent symptoms: overall symptoms (p=0.001), cough all day (p=0.001), morning cough (p=0.009), cough more than 3 months/year (p=0.03), phlegm more than 3 months/year (p=0.037), productive cough all day (p=0.005), frequent wheezing (p=0.019), wheezing when coughing (p=0.038), wheezing when having a cold (p=0.038). In addition, they were older (53.05 vs. 35.38 years, p=<0.0001) and mostly women with higher average exposure hours/day (3.43 vs. 1.86 hours, p=<0.0001). Conclusions: A cutoff of 64 hour−years of exposure to biomass fuel combustion predicted respiratory symptoms with 88.4% sensitivity and 60.4% specificity. This abstract is funded by: None. Am J Respir Crit Care Med 179;2009:A4741 Internet address: www.atsjournals.org Online Abstracts Issue
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