Possible relationship between asbestos exposure and bronchial asthma: a need for clarification

Our plain-English summary of Possible relationship between asbestos exposure and bronchial asthma: a need for clarification, by M. Toyoshima, K. Chida, T. Suda, et al (American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, 2011).

The study

• Authors: M. Toyoshima, K. Chida, T. Suda, M. Sato
• Journal: American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine
• Published: 2011;183(11):1571-2; author reply 1572
• Type of article: Comment, Letter
• Cited by: 1 article, as counted by NIH iCite
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher

In plain English

This item was a short letter to the editor, not a research study, and it reported no new data. The author was responding to a recent article by "Amellie and coworkers" (spelled this way in the letter), which, the letter said, concluded there was no relationship between asbestos exposure alone and airway obstruction. The author pointed to earlier work by others. One study reported that asbestos exposure could cause asthma-like symptoms, although those workers were also exposed to other dusts. Other reports found raised blood levels of IgE, an allergy-related antibody, in asbestos-exposed workers. The author suspected that asbestos exposure itself is a risk factor for bronchial asthma, possibly regardless of dose. The author argued that earlier studies of non-cancer asbestos lung disease had not properly tested workers' allergic status. The author proposed that asbestos might cause airway obstruction by inducing asthma even when confirmed asbestosis is absent, and said further investigation would be needed to clarify this. No fiber type was named.

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) putting forward a hypothesis; no new study or data
• Who was studied: No population was studied. The letter comments on a published article by Amellie and coworkers.
• Exposure: Asbestos exposure in general (no fiber type, product or job named), proposed as a possible risk factor for bronchial asthma
• The authors' conclusion: The author suggested that asbestos exposure may cause airway obstruction by inducing bronchial asthma, even without confirmed asbestosis, and said further investigation is needed to clarify this hypothesis.

Topics

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

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• Surveillance of Australian workplace Based Respiratory Events (SABRE): notifications for the first 3.5 years and validation of occupational asthma cases — D. Elder, M. Abramson, et al. (2004)
• Irregular opacities in the lung, occupational asthma, and airways dysfunction in aluminum workers — K.H. Kilburn, R.H. Warshaw (1992)
• IgG4-related lung disease in a worker occupationally exposed to asbestos — M. Toyoshima, K. Chida, et al. (2010)
• Malignant mesothelioma, airborne asbestos, and the need for accuracy in chrysotile risk assessments — C. Meisenkothen (2013)

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