Analysis on the incidence of coal workers' pneumoconiosis from 2003 to 2008 in a coal mining group / 中华劳动卫生职业病杂志

<p><b>OBJECTIVE</b>Analyzed associations among the incidence of coal workers' pneumoconiosis from 2003 to 2008, jobs, exposure years and cumulative total dust exposure levels (CTE) and found the current characteristics of the mine incidence of pneumoconiosis disease.</p><p><b>METHODS</b>collected the health care information of the new diagnosed pneumoconiosis of underground mine workers from 2003 to 2008 and the dust monitoring data of underground mine from 1949 and estimated the personnel cumulative total dust exposure levels (CTE); analyzed the incidence features of the new diagnosed pneumoconiosis.</p><p><b>RESULTS</b>The rates of health surveillance of workers were gradually improved from 2003 to 2008 and 296 new coal workers pneumoconiosis were diagnosed. The total incidence was 0.57%, and the average annual rate was 0.32%. Among the new diagnosed cases, phase I accounted for 90.5% and the 87.2% from coal mine drillers. The shortest exposure period was 3 years and the longest was 38 years, and the cumulative total dose of dust was varied between 86.1 and 4926 mg/m(3) per year. The total dust accumulated limited dose was calculated by the percentile method to prevent 99% of miners from pneumoconiosis, which was 120.6 mg/m(3) per year, so we suggested that the exposure years should be shorter than 13 years under the current working conditions.</p><p><b>CONCLUSIONS</b>Preventive coal workers' pneumoconiosis should be focused on mine drillers and their limited exposure years should be within 13 years.</p>

Polymorphisms in Fas pathway genes and risk of coal worker pneumoconiosis / 中华劳动卫生职业病杂志

<p><b>OBJECTIVE</b>To explore the possible association between six single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of Fas pathway genes and the risks of coal worker pneumoconiosis (GWP).</p><p><b>METHODS</b>This case-control study consisted of 511 male patients with CWP and 530 male controls from the same coal mines. Five SNPs of Fas pathway genes were detected by restriction fragment length polymorphisms (PCR-RFLP) and CASP3 (rs6948) was genotyped by quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR).</p><p><b>RESULTS</b>There were no differences of genotype frequencies of 6 SNPs between cases with CWP and controls. A significant increased risk of CWP was found in subjects with CASP8-652DD genotype as compared to subjects with CASP8-652II genotype (P < 0.05), and the further stratification analysis showed that smoking cases with CWP stage I, long exposure time and CASP8-652DD genotype had high risk of CWP (P < 0.05). The analysis of gene-gene interactions indicated that the carriers with FAS-1377GG/CASP8-652DD, FAS-670AG/CASP8-652DD and FASL-844CT/CASP8-652DD had the increased risk of CWP, and the carriers with FAS-1377GA/CASP8-652ID had the reduced risk of CWP. There were no significant differences of exposure times among the cases with CWP stage I and 3 genotypes of CASP8-652.</p><p><b>CONCLUSION</b>CASP8-652 6N DD genotype may play a role in CWP development and interact with SNPs of FAS-1377, FAS-670 and FASL-844.</p>