Department of Epidemiology, School of Public Health, UNT Health Science Center, Fort Worth, TX, USA.
Int Arch Occup Environ Health. 2010 Jun;83(5):543-52. doi: 10.1007/s00420-009-0478-6. Epub 2009 Nov 10.
Workers in poultry plants have high exposure to a variety of transmissible agents present in poultry and their products. Subjects in the general population are also exposed. It is not known whether many of these agents cause disease in humans. If they do, we reason this would be readily evident in a highly exposed group such as poultry workers. We report here on mortality from non-malignant diseases in a cohort of poultry workers.
Mortality was compared with that of the US general population, and with that of a comparison group from the same union. Risk was estimated by standardized mortality ratio, proportional mortality ratio, and directly standardized risk ratio.
Poultry workers as a group had an overall excess of deaths from diabetes, anterior horn disease, and hypertensive disease, and a deficit of deaths from intracerebral hemorrhage. Deaths from zoonotic bacterial diseases, helminthiasis, myasthenia gravis, schizophrenia, other diseases of the spinal cord, diseases of the esophagus and peritonitis were non-significantly elevated overall by all analyses, and significantly so in particular race/sex subgroups.
Poultry workers may have excess occurrence of disease affecting several organs and systems, probably originating from widespread infection with a variety of microorganisms. The results for neurologic diseases could well represent important clues to the etiology of these diseases in humans. The small numbers of deaths involved in some cases limit interpretation.
家禽加工厂的工人接触到各种存在于家禽及其产品中的可传播病原体的风险很高。普通人群也会接触到这些病原体。目前尚不清楚这些病原体中有多少会导致人类患病。如果是这样，我们推测在像家禽工人这样高度暴露的人群中，这将很容易显现出来。我们在此报告了一个家禽工人队列的非恶性疾病死亡率。
将死亡率与美国普通人群和来自同一工会的对照组进行比较。风险通过标准化死亡率比、比例死亡率比和直接标准化风险比进行估计。
作为一个群体，家禽工人的总体糖尿病、前角疾病和高血压疾病死亡人数过多，而脑出血死亡人数不足。通过所有分析，家禽工人的人畜共患细菌性疾病、寄生虫病、重症肌无力、精神分裂症、其他脊髓疾病、食管疾病和腹膜炎的死亡人数总体上呈非显著升高，在特定种族/性别亚组中则显著升高。
家禽工人可能会出现多种器官和系统的疾病，这些疾病可能源于广泛感染各种微生物。神经系统疾病的结果很可能为这些疾病在人类中的病因提供重要线索。在某些情况下，涉及的死亡人数较少，限制了对结果的解释。
