Prevalence of Asthma and Rhinitis in Bakery Workers in the City of Sanandaj, Iran

Baker's asthma is one of the most common forms of occupational asthma. this studywas conducted to determine prevalence of asthma and rhinitis among bakery workers in thecity of sanandaj, the provincial center of kurdistan province in the west of iran in the insummer 2006.in this study 776 bread bakery workers were included. these subjects were selectedrandomly among 1620 bakery workers. the diagnosis of asthma was based on a medicalhistory of episodic symptoms of cough, chest tightness, and dyspnea and spirometry. airflowobstruction was determined with spirometry, the definition of airflow obstruction which wasused in this study was an fev1/fvc ratio (less than) 0.8, and fevl or fvc increases of (greater than)12percent and at least 200ml after using a short-acting inhaled beta2-agonist. rhinitis wasdiagnosed by typical history of work related symptoms. analyses were performed on 776subjects (all were men) without missing data for asthma and rhinitis.all of subjects were male with mean age of 33.69(plus-minus)l1.09 years. mean duration of bakeryworking for these subjects was 13.91(plus-minus)9.37 years. prevalence of asthma at the time of studywas 11.9%. 93 subjects were diagnosed as asthma with history, physical and spirometryfindings. 31 (33.3%) of asthmatic workers were diagnosed as asthma previously and 62(66.6%) workers were known as new asthmatic patients which were diagnosed in this studyprogram. the prevalence of rhinitis was (9.9%). subjects with asthma had longer history ofworking at bakery than others (p=0.001).asthma prevalence among these bakery workers that were included in our study wassimilar and in some instances the prevalence was lower than other studies