Prevalence of work-related symptoms and serum-specific antibodies to wheat flour in exposed workers in the bakery industry

Abstract

The overall prevalence of wheat sensitization in a Korean bakery was 5.9%. We confirmed that an IgE-mediated response is the major pathogenic mechanism for the induction of work-related symptoms in wheat-exposed workers. Wheat-specific IgG antibodies may represent current or previous exposure to wheat dust.

Respiratory Morbidity Induced by Occupational Inhalation Exposure to High Concentrations of Wheat Flour Dust

“…Given the above, and the fact that all important confounders were controlled and accounted for in this study, an increased prevalence of respiratory symptoms (cough, phlegm, productive cough, wheezing and dyspnea) as well as significant decrements in the parameters of pulmonary function (VC, FVC, FEV 1 , FEV 1 /FVC and PEF) may well be explained by exposure to flour dust. Consistent with other studies [3,26,27,28], respiratory symptoms were found to be significantly more prevalent among exposed subjects (Table 2). Similarly, occupational exposure to flour dust has been reported to lead to reduction of ventilatory capacities [12,13,14,15,16,17].…”

“…Exposure to flour dust and its related allergens is one of the most prevalent causes of occupational airway disease and occupational asthma in Western Europe [1,2,3,4]. Sensitization to wheat allergens and fungal enzyme, α-amylase, and prevalence of occupational airway disease and occupational asthma, has been shown to be high among workers exposed to flour dust [1,3,5,6].…”

Effect of Toll-like receptor 4 gene polymorphisms on work-related respiratory symptoms and sensitization to wheat flour in bakery workers

“…The job category of the study subjects with exposure intensity was listed as was reported in our previous publication. 20 The group with the highest wheat dust exposure levels (geometric mean, 3.04 mg/m 3 ) consisted of workers in the mixing, weighing, and sieving departments. The intermediate-exposure group, which consisted of workers engaging in kneading, baking, and decoration, experienced a geometric mean exposure of 1.16 mg/m 3 .…”

“…15,16 Moreover, in Asian populations, no functional TLR4 polymorphisms related to asthma have yet been discovered. [17][18][19][20] Given that the bakery workplace is characterized by both endotoxin and allergen exposure, we investigated the association of TLR4 polymorphisms with work-related respiratory symptoms and sensitization to flour allergens to further clarify the role of TLR4 in the development of baker's asthma. In a Korean population, we detected no known nonsynonymous single nuclear polymorphism (SNP) such as G299/I399.…”

Exposure to Respirable Flour Dust and Gliadin in Wheat Flour Mills

“…Similarly, we showed that gliadin-specific IgG and IgA antibodies as well as serum total IgE are markedly higher in flour mill workers than unexposed control subjects (p<0.001). In addition, a great increase in mean total serum antibodies (sum of gliadinspecific IgG and IgA and serum total IgE antibodies) was observed in test subjects compared with the controls, confirming induction of allergic responses in flour-exposed workers 22,31,32) . However, no correlation has been found between serum gliadin-specific antibodies and age or years of working at a given workstation.…”