Abstract
Background: Previous studies have suggested increased risk of asthma in adults related to dampness and mold problems in homes and at work, but their role in the etiology of asthma-COPD overlap syndrome has not been studied. We applied a population-based incident case–control study to assess potential effects of indoor dampness problems and molds at work and at home on development of ACOS in adults.
Methods: We recruited systematically all new cases of asthma during a 2.5-year study period (1997–2000) and randomly selected controls from a source population consisting of adults 21–63 years old living in South Finland. The exposure indicators included water damage, damp stains or paint peeling, visible mold, and mold odor, asked separately for home and workplace. The clinically diagnosed case series consisted of altogether 521 adults with newly diagnosed asthma. Altogether 25 of those satisfied the criteria for ACOS-cases, defined as FEV1/FVC <0.70 based on post-bronchodilator spirometry. The control series, including 932 controls, were identified from the random sample of the same source population, after we excluded 76 (7.5%) controls with previous asthma.
Results: In logistic regression analysis adjusting for confounders, the risk of ACOS was significantly related to the presence of mold odor in the workplace (OR 3.43; 95% CI 1.04–11.29), but not to visible mold, water damage or damp stains alone. We estimated the fraction of asthma attributable to workplace mold exposure to be 70.8% (95% CI 3.8–91.1%) among the exposed. The risk of asthma was not related to exposures at home.
Conclusions: Present results provide new evidence of the relation between workplace exposure to indoor mold odor and adult-onset ACOS.
Footnotes
Cite this article as: European Respiratory Journal 2019; 54: Suppl. 63, PA1989.
This is an ERS International Congress abstract. No full-text version is available. Further material to accompany this abstract may be available at www.ers-education.org (ERS member access only).
- Copyright ©the authors 2019