Long-term follow-up of beryllium sensitized workers from a single employer

BMC Public Health

Research Article

David C Deubner¹  Anne M Curtis²  Mark R Cullen³  Mona Duggal⁴ 

[1] Brush-Wellman Inc., 14710 West Portage River South Road, 43416, Elmore, OH, USA;Department of Diagnostic Imaging, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA;Department of General Internal Medicine, Stanford University, 251 Campus Drive, MSOB 338, 94306, Stanford, CA, USA;Department of Internal Medicine, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA;

关键词: Lung Function;    Beryllium;    Total Lung Capacity;    Clinical Abnormality;    Mononuclear Cell Infiltrate;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2458-10-5

 received in 2009-06-29, accepted in 2010-01-04,  发布年份 2010

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundUp to 12% of beryllium-exposed American workers would test positive on beryllium lymphocyte proliferation test (BeLPT) screening, but the implications of sensitization remain uncertain.MethodsSeventy two current and former employees of a beryllium manufacturer, including 22 with pathologic changes of chronic beryllium disease (CBD), and 50 without, with a confirmed positive test were followed-up for 7.4 +/-3.1 years.ResultsBeyond predicted effects of aging, flow rates and lung volumes changed little from baseline, while DLCO dropped 17.4% of predicted on average. Despite this group decline, only 8 subjects (11.1%) demonstrated physiologic or radiologic abnormalities typical of CBD. Other than baseline status, no clinical or laboratory feature distinguished those who clinically manifested CBD at follow-up from those who did not.ConclusionsThe clinical outlook remains favorable for beryllium-sensitized individuals over the first 5-12 years. However, declines in DLCO may presage further and more serious clinical manifestations in the future. These conclusions are tempered by the possibility of selection bias and other study limitations.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Duggal et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2010. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.