Estimating Lifetime Asbestos Exposure in Patients With Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis

Our plain-English summary of Estimating Lifetime Asbestos Exposure in Patients With Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis, by C.M. Barber, R.E. Wiggans, D. Fishwick (The Annals of Occupational Hygiene, 2016).

The study

• Authors: C.M. Barber, R.E. Wiggans, D. Fishwick
• Journal: The Annals of Occupational Hygiene
• Published: 2016;60(5):649-50
• Type of article: Letter, Comment
• Cited by: 1 article, as counted by NIH iCite
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher · Free full text

In plain English

This is a letter to the editor, not a research study, and it reports no new data. The authors responded to an article by van Oyen and colleagues (2015) describing a job-exposure matrix, called AsbJEM, for estimating lifetime occupational asbestos exposure in Australia. A job-exposure matrix estimates a person's likely exposure from the jobs they held. The authors referred to their own earlier article, which found a strong correlation between mesothelioma and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) yearly deaths in the UK between 1968 and 2012, in both males and females. They noted that this may be entirely coincidental. They also cited a 2009 case–control study of mesothelioma by Rake and colleagues. In that study, 65% of men and 23% of women among 1420 age-matched controls had worked in jobs classed as medium or high risk for asbestos exposure. The authors accepted that such matrices cannot calculate exact lifetime doses for each individual patient. They believed a UK model based on years worked in different job titles would give a more standardized and objective estimate than current practice. They encouraged van Oyen and colleagues to use AsbJEM to carry out a case–control study of IPF in Australia.

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 (commentary); no new data collected
• Who was studied: No people were studied for this letter. It comments on van Oyen et al. (2015), which developed a job-exposure matrix (AsbJEM) for Australia.
• Exposure: Lifetime occupational asbestos exposure, which the authors propose estimating for UK patients from the number of years worked in different job titles
• Main results:
  • Not a finding of this letter: the authors cite their own earlier article (Barber et al., 2016), which found a strong correlation between mesothelioma and IPF annual mortality in the UK from 1968 to 2012, in both males and females
  • Not a finding of this letter: the authors cite a 2009 case–control study by Rake et al. in which, among 1420 age-matched controls, 65% of men and 23% of women had worked in occupations classified as medium or high risk for asbestos exposure
• The authors' conclusion: The authors wished to further highlight a possible link between asbestos exposure and IPF. They encouraged van Oyen et al. to use AsbJEM for a case–control study of IPF in Australia.
• Limitations the authors state:
  • The authors accept that population job-exposure matrices cannot calculate exact lifetime doses for each individual patient
  • The authors note that the correlation they reported earlier between mesothelioma and IPF mortality may be entirely coincidental

Topics

Medical terms in this study, explained in our Lexicon: Asbestos Exposure, Idiopathic, Pulmonary Fibrosis.

Related studies

• UK asbestos imports and mortality due to idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis — C.M. Barber, R.E. Wiggans, et al. (2016)
• Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis and asbestos use — C.M. Barber, D. Fishwick (2019)
• Occupational and environmental risk factors for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis in Australia: case-control study — M.J. Abramson, T. Murambadoro, et al. (2020)
• Radiological characteristics, histological features and clinical outcomes of lung cancer patients with coexistent idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis — K.A. Khan, M.P. Kennedy, et al. (2015)
• Loss of ANT1 Increases Fibrosis and Epithelial Cell Senescence in Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis — J. Sui, J.C. Boatz, et al. (2023)
• The Role of Occupational and Environmental Exposures in the Pathogenesis of Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis: A Narrative Literature Review — S.P. Trethewey, G.I. Walters (2018)

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