Occupational Lung Disease
Occupational Lung Disease remains common in the
UK, and the Health and Safety executive is committed via the disease
reduction programme to reduce the incidence of such diseases, and the
personal impact associated with these. The Centre for Workplace Health (CWH)
has an active programme of both qualitative and quantitative research
into occupational lung disorders, and all research is currently
coordinated through the Centre, a formal University of Sheffield
Research Centre. In terms of QUALITATIVE
research, we are active in areas associated with worker attitude and
perception of respiratory illness and the workplace and behaviour
change. A recent publication has highlighted the complex set of
attitudes and perceptions of workers with possible occupational asthma.
Only by understanding these fully can workplace intervention packages be
designed to reduce the risk of airway sensitisation. Further work in
this area is ongoing, as part of a PhD project for a respiratory nurse
specialist. Major themes for
research at CWH are as follows:
CLINICAL RESEARCH
CWH has a major interest in the diagnostic process for occupational lung
disease. It is evident that national and international consensus does
not exist for criteria used to diagnose occupational and COPD. We
currently coordinate the UK Group of Occupational Respiratory Disease
Specialists (GORDS), and have recently produced evidence from this group
of inter-physician diagnostic agreement for real cases of probable
occupational asthma. This work has now been extended internationally,
and is due to report during 2006. Further similar work is now planned in
COPD, assessing agreement of occupational influences on COPD.
From the group we have produced a standard of care
for occupational asthma; due to be assessed by the British Thoracic
Society standards of care committee in 2007.
WORKPLACE BASED RESEARCH
The Centre is involved in a variety of workplace projects, including
assessment of exposures to flour dust in bakeries, metal cutting fluids,
nail bars, hairdressing salons and spray painting facilities.
APPLIED SCIENTIFC RESEARCH
The Centre has a particular interest in the non-invasive assessment of
airway inflammation. Whilst basic scientific principles clearly apply in
this arena, workplace based solutions have to be simple and practical,
or will not be successfully adopted by industry. We have particular
expertise in flow cytometric analysis, cytokine measurements, specific
IgE and precipitating IgG measures amongst other techniques. These have
been used in a variety of research applications, including assessment of
response to inhaled endotoxin.
A particular long standing interest of the research group is
sensitisation to enzymatic flour additives, and their role in
sensitisation and occupational asthma in bakers.
If you are interested in learning more about this
research, please contact us. |
