4.1 Article

Occupation and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis risk: a case-control study in the isolated island population of Malta

出版社

TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD
DOI: 10.1080/21678421.2021.1905847

关键词

Physical activity; isolated population; Malta; Maltese; amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

资金

  1. University of Malta Research Excellence Fund
  2. Malta Council for Science & Technology Internationalization Partnership Award
  3. Endeavor Scholarship (Malta) - EU - European Social Fund under Operational Programme II Cohesion Policy
  4. Bjorn Formosa Scholarship for Advanced Research in to ALS/MND - ALS Malta Foundation

向作者/读者索取更多资源

The study found that ALS patients were more likely to have blue-collar jobs, with carpentry and construction occupations being positively associated with ALS and bulbar-onset ALS. The findings suggest that manual workers, particularly in the carpentry and construction industries, have an increased ALS risk due to a history of intense or sustained physical activity.
Objective: Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a mostly sporadic neurodegenerative disease. The role of environmental factors has been extensively investigated but associations remain controversial. Considering that a substantial proportion of adult life is spent at work, identifying occupations and work-related exposures is considered an effective way to detect factors that increase ALS risk. This process may be further facilitated in population isolates due to environmental and genetic homogeneity. Our study investigated occupations and occupational exposures potentially associated with ALS risk in the isolated island population of Malta, using a case-control study design. Methods: Patients with ALS and randomly identified matched controls (1:1) were recruited throughout a four-year window, from 2017 through 2020. Data on educational level, residence, main occupation, smoking, and alcohol history were collected. Results: We found that compared to controls (44.4%), a higher percentage (73.7%) of ALS patients reported a blue-collar job as their main occupation (OR 2.04, 95% CI 1.2-3.72; p = 0.0072). Through regression analysis, craft and related trades occupations such as carpentry and construction (ISCO-08 major group 7), were found to be positively associated with ALS, with patients in this occupational category found to be more prone to develop bulbar-onset ALS (p = 0.0297). Overall, patients with ALS reported a significantly higher exposure to work-related strenuous physical activity (OR 2.35, 95% CI 1.53-3.59; p = 0.0002). Conclusion: Our findings suggest that manual workers particularly those working in the carpentry and construction industries have an increased ALS risk, possibly due to a history of intense or sustained physical activity.

作者

我是这篇论文的作者
点击您的名字以认领此论文并将其添加到您的个人资料中。

评论

主要评分

4.1
评分不足

次要评分

新颖性
-
重要性
-
科学严谨性
-
评价这篇论文

推荐

暂无数据
暂无数据