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New Eliciting Agents of Occupational Asthma

  • Occupational Allergy (S Quirce and J Sastre, Section Editors)
  • Published:
Current Treatment Options in Allergy Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Opinion statement

Occupational asthma is a type of asthma that arises from exposures in the workplace. There are more than 400 known causes of occupational asthma and the list is growing. New causes of allergic occupational asthma involving high and low molecular weight agents are continuously being reported. Their knowledge is important for physicians and occupational health and safety professionals to maintain a high level of suspicion in exposed workers to these substances. The majority of new causes of allergic occupational asthma between 2011 and mid-2016 were seen with high-molecular-weight agents. Most new cases are observed in food and agro-alimentary industry, but also in the cosmetic industry, and frequently are associated with other IgE-mediated manifestations, especially allergic rhinoconjunctivitis and contact urticaria. Among the low-molecular weight agents, new acrylate and aldehyde compounds have been identified as eliciting agents of occupational asthma, as well as drugs, biocides, and other chemicals recently introduced in industry.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Allergy, Hospital La Paz Institute for Health Research (IdiPAZ), Paseo de la Castellana, 261, 28046, Madrid, Spain

    Javier Dominguez-Ortega MD, PhD & Santiago Quirce MD, PhD

  2. CIBER de Enfermedades Respiratorias, CIBERES, Madrid, Spain

    Javier Dominguez-Ortega MD, PhD & Santiago Quirce MD, PhD

  3. Allergy Unit, Hospital MAZ, Zaragoza, Spain

    Ignacio Pérez-Camo MD

Authors
  1. Javier Dominguez-Ortega MD, PhD
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  2. Ignacio Pérez-Camo MD
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  3. Santiago Quirce MD, PhD
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Correspondence to Javier Dominguez-Ortega MD, PhD.

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Dr. Javier Dominguez-Ortega, Dr. Ignacio Pérez-Camo, Dr. Santiago Quirce declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

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This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

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This article is part of the Topical Collection on Occupational Allergy

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Dominguez-Ortega, J., Pérez-Camo, I. & Quirce, S. New Eliciting Agents of Occupational Asthma. Curr Treat Options Allergy 4, 129–144 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40521-017-0123-7

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