High prevalence of occupational exposure to solvents or silica in male systemic sclerosis patients: a Belgian cohort analysis

Increasing evidence supports a relation of some occupational exposures to systemic sclerosis pathogenesis. We aimed to evaluate occupational exposure and clinical characteristics in male patients with systemic sclerosis followed in two Belgian academic hospitals. One hundred and three male patients, included in the Belgian Systemic Sclerosis Cohort, were identified. An expert in occupational medicine reviewed the occupational history and allocated the patients to one of the following groups: probable exposure to crystalline silica, probable exposure to solvents, probable exposure to other toxi... Mehr ...

Verfasser: De Decker, Evelien
Vanthuyne, Marie
Blockmans, Daniel
Houssiau, Frédéric
Lenaerts, Jan
Westhovens, Rene
Nemery, Benoit
De Langhe, Ellen
Dokumenttyp: Artikel
Erscheinungsdatum: 2018
Verlag/Hrsg.: Springer
Schlagwörter: Crystalline silica / Environment / Occupational exposure / Solvents / Systemic sclerosis
Sprache: Englisch
Permalink: https://search.fid-benelux.de/Record/base-28879942
Datenquelle: BASE; Originalkatalog
Powered By: BASE
Link(s) : http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/220164

Increasing evidence supports a relation of some occupational exposures to systemic sclerosis pathogenesis. We aimed to evaluate occupational exposure and clinical characteristics in male patients with systemic sclerosis followed in two Belgian academic hospitals. One hundred and three male patients, included in the Belgian Systemic Sclerosis Cohort, were identified. An expert in occupational medicine reviewed the occupational history and allocated the patients to one of the following groups: probable exposure to crystalline silica, probable exposure to solvents, probable exposure to other toxins, or no suspected occupational exposure. Clinical characteristics were extracted from the Belgian Systemic Sclerosis Cohort database. Sufficient data were available for 96/103 patients. Most of these male patients (70/96, 72.9%) had a history of occupational exposure, 55 patients were likely exposed to crystalline silica, 11 patients to solvents, 2 patients to both silica and solvents, and 2 patients to asbestos. Only 26 patients had no suspected occupational exposure (27.1%). We noticed a significant difference in smoking status between exposed and non-exposed patients, with the highest percentage of ever smokers in the group with solvent exposure (p = 0.011). We found no significant differences in disease phenotype between exposed and non-exposed patients. However, we noted a trend to a higher prevalence of anti-Scl70 antibodies, cardiac dysfunction, and higher disease activity score in patients with occupational exposure. We observed a strikingly high prevalence of occupational exposure to both silica and solvents in male systemic sclerosis patients. Occupational exposure to silica or solvents is highly prevalent in male systemic sclerosis patients.