News Release

American Thoracic Society journal news tips for August (second issue)

Peer-Reviewed Publication

American Thoracic Society

SLEEP APNEA IN YOUNG CHILDREN ASSOCIATED WITH BIG TONSILS AND ENLARGED ADENOID TISSUE

Investigators using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studied the upper airway of 18 young children with obstructive sleep apnea syndrome (OSAS) and 18 young controls. They found that the children with OSAS had much smaller airway volume which was further restricted by significantly larger tonsil and adenoid tissue. Researchers compared the upper airway structure of the 18 young children with OSAS (average age 4.8 years) with 18 matched controls who had no sleep apnea. They discovered the upper airway volume of the OSAS patients was significantly smaller in comparison with the controls, their adenoid tissue was 55 percent larger, and their tonsils were 58 percent bigger. (Apnea is the arrest or stoppage of respiration during sleep that usually lasts 10 seconds or longer before breathing resumes. Hypopnea is slow, shallow respiration.) The researchers believe the oversized adenoid tissue and large tonsils are the main factors contributing to the airway restriction in the OSAS patients. They found no correlations of percent differences in airway volume alone with the severity of OSAS. The research appears in the second of two August issues of the American Thoracic Society’s peer- reviewed American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

WORK-RELATED FACTORS CONTRIBUTE TO MUCH HIGHER PERSISTENT ASTHMA RATES

Utilizing 12 years of data involving all employed workers in the country between the ages of 25 and 59, Finnish researchers discovered that work-related factors were attributable to persistent asthma in 29 percent of the male and 17 percent of the female cases. By using 1986 to 1998 data from 3 census periods, they uncovered 49,575 cases of asthma; they also found that disease risk increased for workers employed in the agricultural, manufacturing, and service sectors. According to the authors, the overall importance of work factors to the development of persistent asthma might be 5 times greater than previously thought, and the number of risk factors much larger than previously identified. Recent reports for percentage of occupational involvement in asthma incidence were 18 percent for Canada and 21 percent for the U.S. According to the authors, adult-onset asthma is common among people of working age and its occurrence appears to be growing. More than 200 specific agents encountered at work can cause asthma. However, the role of nonspecific respiratory irritants at the workplace has not been studied intensely but may be more important than customarily thought. This article appears in the second of two August issues of the American Thoracic Society’s peer-reviewed American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

DYNAMIC MODEL PREDICTS FUTURE BURDEN OF CHRONIC OBSTRUCTIVE PULMONARY DISEASE

Projections, based on a dynamic life table model by Dutch researchers, show chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) prevalence rates in the Netherlands increasing from 21 per 1,000 men in 1994 to 33 per 1,000 in 2015 and from 10 per 1,000 women to 23 per 1,000. These figures correspond to a 59 percent increase for men and a 123 percent expansion for women by 2015. The investigators said that a male COPD patient loses an average of 8 years of life expectancy when compared with a male who has no COPD, and the disease costs a female patient an average of 10.5 years of life. (COPD is a serious, nonreversible lung disease that is usually a combination of chronic bronchitis and advanced emphysema. Caused by heavy smoking, victims lose elasticity in their lungs and have difficulty moving air in and out.) The authors acknowledge that smoking prevalence in the Netherlands is among the highest in the European Union, especially among women. The Dutch rates are considerably higher than those in the U.S. In addition to their projections about life years lost, the investigators’ model also indicated a 90 percent increase in total health care costs for the Netherlands between 1994 and 2015, assuming a reduction in smoking. The research appears in the second of two August issues of the American Thoracic Society’s peer-reviewed American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

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For the complete text of the articles, please see the ATS Journal Online Website at http://www.atsjournals.org For the contact information on a specific investigator, to request a complimentary journalist subscription to ATS journals online, or if you would like additional details from the monthly postal or e-mail news release briefs provided only to journalists, contact Cathy Carlomagno at 212-315-6442, by fax at 212-315-6456, or by e-mail at ccarlomagno@thoracic.org


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