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 study
was conducted to determine prevalence of asthma and rhinitis among bakery workers in the
city of Sanandaj, the provincial center of Kurdistan province in the west of Iran in the in
Summer 2006.
In this study 776 bread bakery workers were included. These subjects were selected
randomly among 1620 bakery workers. The diagnosis of asthma was based on a medical
history of episodic symptoms of cough, chest tightness, and dyspnea and spirometry. Airflow
obstruction was determined with spirometry, the definition of airflow obstruction which was
used in this study was an FEV1/FVC ratio < 0.8, and FEV1 or FVC increases of ≥ 12
percent and at least 200mL after using a short-acting inhaled beta2-agonist. Rhinitis was
diagnosed by typical history of work related symptoms. Analyses were performed on 776
subjects (all were men) without missing data for asthma and rhinitis.
All of subjects were male with mean age of 33.69±11.09 years. Mean duration of bakery
working for these subjects was 13.91±9.37 years. Prevalence of asthma at the time of study
was 11.9%. 93 subjects were diagnosed as asthma with history, physical and spirometry
findings. 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 study
program. The prevalence of rhinitis was (9.9%). Subjects with asthma had longer history of
working at bakery than others (P=0.001).
Asthma prevalence among these bakery workers that were included in our study was
similar and in some instances the prevalence was lower than other studies