Medical Article on houshold mold and asthma

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Indoor dampness and molds and development of adult-onset asthma: a

population-based incident case-control study.

Jaakkola MS, Nordman H, Piipari R, Uitti J, Laitinen J, Karjalainen A,

Hahtola P, Jaakkola JJ.

Finnish Institute of Occupational Health, Helsinki, Finland.

Previous cross-sectional and prevalent case-control studies have

suggested increased risk of asthma in adults related to dampness

problems and molds in homes. We conducted a population-based incident

case-control study to assess the effects of indoor dampness problems

and

molds at work and at home on development of asthma in adults. We

recruited systematically all new cases of asthma during a 2.5-year

study

period (1997-2000) and randomly selected controls from a source

population consisting of adults 21-63 years old living in the

Pirkanmaa

Hospital district, South Finland. The clinically diagnosed case series

consisted of 521 adults with newly diagnosed asthma and the control

series of 932 controls, after we excluded 76 (7.5%) controls with a

history of asthma. In logistic regression analysis adjusting for

confounders, the risk of asthma was related to the presence of visible

mold and/or mold odor in the workplace (odds ratio, 1.54; 95%

confidence

interval, 1.01-2.32) but not to water damage or damp stains alone. We

estimated the fraction of asthma attributable to workplace mold

exposure

to be 35.1% (95% confidence interval, 1.0-56.9%) among the exposed.

Present results provide new evidence of the relation between workplace

exposure to indoor molds and adult-onset asthma.

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This was reported in the May, 2002 edition

Phares Heindl

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