Asbestos bodies

Our plain-English summary of Asbestos bodies, by H.C. Lewinsohn (British Medical Journal, 1968).

The study

• Author: H.C. Lewinsohn
• Journal: British Medical Journal
• Published: 1968;2(5597):120
• Cited by: 1 article, as counted by NIH iCite
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher · Free full text

In plain English

This letter to the editor was not a research study. The author, an industrial medical officer at Turner Brothers Asbestos Co. Ltd. in Rochdale, commented on a paper by Dr. T. Ashcroft about "asbestos bodies" found in routine necropsies on Tyneside. As the letter describes it, Ashcroft found such bodies in 63 of 311 necropsy cases. The series recorded no severe asbestosis and one pleural mesothelioma, and Ashcroft found no statistically valid association between the bodies and cancers in the series. The author argued that the bodies were identified only by their appearance under the light microscope, and that no published study had shown whether they were actually asbestos. The author wrote that other needle-shaped minerals, elastic lung tissue, and talc (possibly through the tremolite it can contain) can form look-alike "ferruginous bodies". Such bodies have been reported in graphite workers, soft-coal miners and others. The author reported that animal experiments still in progress had so far shown such bodies forming after inhalation of talc, glass fibre and aluminium hydroxide, but gave no data. The author asked future researchers to demonstrate asbestos before using the term.

We wrote this plain-English summary from the full article with the help of AI, and a second AI model checked each sentence against the article. It is not the authors' wording; the abstract and the article are their own account.

What the study did and found

• Design: letter to the editor (correspondence) commenting on another author's published necropsy study; no original data
• Who was studied: No population of its own. The letter discusses Dr. T. Ashcroft's series of routine necropsies on Tyneside, in which, as described, asbestos bodies were found in 63 of 311 cases
• Exposure: So-called asbestos bodies identified by light microscopy, versus look-alike "ferruginous bodies" from other sources such as other needle-shaped minerals, elastic lung tissue, talc (possibly containing tremolite), glass fibre, aluminium hydroxide, and work in graphite, soft-coal mining and diatomaceous earth
• Main results:
  • The author stated that no published study had supporting data showing whether all, most or some of the bodies were asbestos
  • As the author describes Ashcroft's series: no severe asbestosis was recorded, one pleural mesothelioma was recorded, and Ashcroft concluded there was no statistically valid association between the bodies and malignancies in the series
  • The author stated that needle-shaped mineral particles other than asbestos can produce structures closely resembling asbestos bodies
  • The author stated that talc exposure may produce bodies indistinguishable from asbestos bodies, possibly due to tremolite in talc
  • The author reported, without data, that animal experiments still in progress had so far shown ferruginous bodies forming after inhalation of talc, glass fibre and aluminium hydroxide
  • The author cited literature reporting so-called asbestos bodies in workers exposed to things other than asbestos, such as graphite workers, soft-coal miners and diatomaceous earth workers
• The authors' conclusion: The author asked future investigators to make every effort to demonstrate asbestos in ferruginous bodies rather than concluding on appearance alone that they are asbestos

Topics

The National Library of Medicine indexes this study under subjects our site covers: Asbestosis.

Medical terms in this study, explained in our Lexicon: Asbestos Bodies.

Related studies

• A method for extracting ferruginous bodies from sputum and pulmonary tissue — M.J. Smith, B. Naylor (1972)
• Presence of asbestos bodies in organs other than the lung — O. Auerbach, A.S. Conston, et al. (1980)
• Asbestos bodies, their formation, composition and character — F.D. Pooley (1972)
• Asbestos bodies in human lungs at autopsy — D. Cauna, R.S. Totten, et al. (1965)
• A procedure for the isolation of amosite asbestos and ferruginous bodies from lung tissue and sputum — M.G. Williams, R.F. Dodson, et al. (1982)
• Ferruginous bodies: implications in the mechanism of fiber and particle toxicity — A.J. Ghio, A. Churg, et al. (2004)

Browse more research in British Medical Journal, or return to medical research.