Seed, M, Enoch, SJ and Agius, R (2015) Chemical determinants of occupational hypersensitivity pneumonitis. Occupational Medicine, 65 (8). pp. 673-681. ISSN 1471-8405

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Abstract

Background: Workplace inhalational exposures to low molecular weight (LMW) chemicals cause hypersensitivity pneumonitis (HP) as well as the more common manifestation of respiratory hypersensitivity, occupational asthma (OA).

Aims: To explore whether chemical causation of HP is associated with different structural and physico-chemical determinants from OA.

Methods: Chemical causes of human cases of HP and OA were identified from searches of peer-reviewed literature up to the end of 2011. Each chemical was categorised according to whether or not it had been the attributed cause of at least one case of HP. The predicted asthma hazard was determined for each chemical using a previously developed quantitative structure-activity relationship (QSAR) model. The chemicals in both sets were independently and ‘blindly’ analysed by an expert in mechanistic chemistry for a qualitative prediction of protein cross-linking potential and determination of lipophilicity (log Kow).

Results: Ten HP causing chemicals were identified and had a higher median QSAR predicted asthma hazard than the control group of 101 OA causing chemicals (p < 0.005). Nine of ten HP causing chemicals were predicted to be protein cross-linkers compared to 24/92 controls (p<0.0001). The distributions of log Kow indicated higher values for the HP list (median 3.47) compared to controls (median 0.81) (p < 0.05).

Conclusion: These findings suggest that chemicals capable of causing HP tend to have higher predicted asthma hazard, are more lipophilic and are more likely to be protein cross-linkers than those causing OA.

Key words: hypersensitivity pneumonitis, occupational chemicals, occupational respiratory disease, toxic inhalation

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	This is a pre-copyedited, author-produced PDF of an article accepted for publication in Occupational Medicine following peer review. The version of record Occup Med (Lond) (2015) 65 (8): 673-681 is available online at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/occmed/kqv143
Uncontrolled Keywords:	1117 Public Health And Health Services
Subjects:	R Medicine > RA Public aspects of medicine R Medicine > RS Pharmacy and materia medica
Divisions:	Pharmacy & Biomolecular Sciences
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Date Deposited:	16 Jul 2015 13:16
Last Modified:	02 Mar 2022 12:30
DOI or ID number:	10.1093/occmed/kqv143
URI:	https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/1628

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