Occupational asthma in snow crab-processing workers

Cartier, André; Jl, Malo; Forest, Félix; Lafrance, Monique; Pineau, Line; Jj, St-Aubin; Jy, Dubois

doi:10.1016/0091-6749(84)90256-2

Cited by 206 publications

(130 citation statements)

References 14 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

119

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…OA has been defined as: 1) the presence of respiratory symptoms at work (e.g. symptoms of wheezing, cough, dyspnoea, chest tightness that resolve after some time away from work [18,29,30]; or 2) as one or the other of combinations that include work-related respiratory symptoms, specific immunological sensitisation [31], variation in serial peak-flow measurements [32][33][34] and increased nonspecific bronchial responsiveness [7]. As uncertainty persists in the ascertainment of OA in epidemiological studies, the terms "asthma-like," "possible OA" [25] and "probable OA" [7,25] have been used to describe the syndrome.…”

Section: Prevalence Of Occupational Asthmamentioning

confidence: 99%

Controversies in epidemiology of occupational asthma

Gautrin¹,

Aj²,

Nordman³

et al. 2003

Eur Respir J

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

high-risk workplaces, medicolegal statistics and sentinel programmes indicate that y10% of adult-onset asthma is attributable to the workplace. The strategy to identify cases through questionnaires and tools that address functional, immunological and physiopathological issues needs to be improved.Although few in number and limited to a handful of workplaces, cohort studies found that the risk of developing occupational asthma is determined less by individual susceptibility (e.g. atopy, tobacco smoking, human leukocyte antigen phenotype) and more by the level of exposure to its causes; in general, the higher the exposure, the greater the risk, and, by implication, lowering the level of exposure reduces the incidence of disease.Occupational asthma can be used as a satisfactory model for the development of adult-onset asthma. There is a great need to develop intervention strategies through adequate surveillance programmes in high-risk workplaces. Eur Respir J 2003; 22: 551-559. Epidemiology of occupational asthma: general considerations on various study designs and methodological approachesEpidemiology is the study of the distribution, determinants and outcome of disease. In this article, the authors will describe recently acquired knowledge of the epidemiology of occupational asthma, as well as current areas of controversy.BECKLAKE et al.[1] have discussed the features, strengths and weaknesses of several designs used in epidemiological studies. These designs include the randomised control trial, the prospective cohort, the case-referent study, the crosssectional (prevalence) study and the case series. Which design to use in any particular situation is a matter of judgment, determined by a number of factors that may include resources, cost, collaboration of employers and employees, and the question under study. So far, primarily for practical convenience, most epidemiological studies of occupational asthma have been cross-sectional in type. As discussed in several reviews [1,2], this type of study, primarily in the case of occupational asthma (OA), suffers from survivor bias, whose magnitude can be difficult to quantify. Randomised control trials are usually not feasible and are probably unethical in workplace studies, but quasi-experimental studies can provide results of high internal and external validity. Prospective cohort studies are more expensive than cross-sectional studies but are more powerful and less likely to be affected by selection or survivor biases; in particular, it is often possible to track the participants who leave the cohort and determine the possible effect of attrition on the estimates of both the frequency of OA and exposure/effect relationships [3]. This type of study has recently been successfully applied in cohorts of young apprentices [4][5][6][7][8][9][10]. Some case-referent studies have been carried out in the field of OA [11,12]. These studies are valuable in identifying and quantifying risk factors. Finally, there are many case series that mainly describe clinical cases (often si...

show abstract

Section: Prevalence Of Occupational Asthmamentioning

confidence: 99%

Controversies in epidemiology of occupational asthma

Gautrin¹,

Aj²,

Nordman³

et al. 2003

Eur Respir J

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…It remains uncertain how long a subject should be exposed before SIC can be considered negative, because specific bronchial responsiveness to occupational agents may decline when the subject is removed from exposure [31][32][33][34][35][36]. However, a recent prospective study indicates that specific bronchial responsiveness almost never completely disappears, although a longer challenge exposure to the causal agent may be necessary to produce an asthmatic reaction after removal from the workplace of 2 yrs or more [36].…”

Section: Duration Of Exposurementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Estimates of prevalence among workers in high-risk occupations are largely affected by the criteria used for defining OA. The wide range of prevalence figures obtained using different diagnostic criteria are presented in tables 1 and 2, which summarize the results of surveys conducted among workers exposed to LMW [95][96][97][98][99][100][101][102] and HMW agents [32,83,[103][104][105][106][107].…”

Section: Clinical Purposesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Inhalation challenges with agents causing occupational asthma

Vandenplas¹,

Jl²

1997

Eur Respir J

124

103

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Occupational asthma (OA) is steadily emerging as the principal cause of respiratory disease due to the workplace environment. One of the key means to ascertain diagnosis of OA is specific inhalation challenge (SIC) with occupational agents. This review: 1) describes the methodology of SIC, with a special emphasis on procedures aimed at increasing the safety and validity of these tests; and 2) outlines the roles of SIC in the diagnosis of OA in clinical and medicolegal assessment, epidemiological studies, surveillance programmes and the investigation of the pathophysiological mechanisms of asthma and OA. We discuss areas of future development, including the development of apparatus which allows exposure of subjects to low and stable concentrations of the occupational agent and the assessment of preventive procedures.

show abstract

“…Seafood antigens seem to be particularly potent sensitizing agents in humans [2j and in animals [3], and they can cause significant clinical problems in sensitized subjects [4]. These problems normally arise following ingestion of seafood [5,6], but respiratory symptoms can occur in workers exposed to aerosols of antigens generated in the processing of seafood [7][8][9][10][11][12]. The topic of Crustacea allergy has been reviewed recently [12], and it is clear that the constitutional and environmental factors which predispose individuals to develop symptoms when exposed to these unusual antigenic aerosols are poorly understood.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%