Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and inflammatory biomarkers in retired workers exposed to inorganic dusts

The persistent lung inflammation results in inhaled toxic dusts bring pathologic changes in airway system that lead to development of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Recently, beyond local inflammation in lung, COPD is regarded as chronic systemic inflammatory disease linked to extra pulmonary disease. Therefore, several local and systemic inflammatory biomarkers were needed to be investigated for understanding of COPD. Hence, this current study was aimed to identify the association between COPD and inflammatory biomarkers in workers exposed to inorganic dusts. Clara cell secretary proteins (CC-16) and surfactant protein D (SP-D) were chosen as local inflammatory biomarker, high sensitive Creactive protein (hsCRP), interleukin (IL)-6, serum amyloid protein A (SAA) and tyrosine lysine leucine 40 (YKL-40) were chosen as systemic inflammatory markers in 39 COPD and 39 control group. In current study, CC-16, hsCRP and YKL-40 were linked to COPD in conditional logistic regression model. Furthermore, CC-16 and hsCRP are related to COPD independently to working duration and smoking history. These results suggest that local and inflammatory biomarker could be independent predictor of COPD in worker exposed to inorganic dusts. © 2013 Korean Society of Environmental Risk Assessment and Health Science and Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht.