Chronic exposure to diesel exhaust may cause small airway wall thickening without lumen narrowing: a quantitative computerized tomography study in Chinese diesel engine testers

• DOI: 10.1186/s12989-021-00406-1
• Publication Date: 2021-03-25T09:03:31Z
• Authors: Hong Liu; Jianyu Li; Qianli Ma; Jinglong Tang; Menghui Jiang; Xue Cao; Li Lin; Nan Kong; Shanfa Yu; Akshay Sood; Yuxin Zheng; Shuguang Leng; Wei Han
• Keywords: Lumen (anatomy); Airway obstruction

Abstract Background Diesel exhaust (DE) is a major source of ultrafine particulate matters (PM) in ambient air and contaminates many occupational settings. Airway remodeling assessed using computerized tomography (CT) correlates well with spirometry patients obstructive lung diseases. Structural changes small airways caused by chronic DE exposure unknown. Wall lumen areas 6th 9th generations four candidate were quantified end-inhalation CT scans 78 diesel engine testers (DET) 76 non-DETs. Carbon content airway macrophage (CCAM) sputum was to assess the dose-response relationship. Results Environmental monitoring CCAM showed much higher PM DETs, which associated wall area percent for generation airways. However, no reduction identified. No study subjects met diagnosis obstruction. This suggested that thickening without narrowing may be an early feature DETs. The effect status on did not differ lobes or smoking status. Although trend test borderline significance between categorized percent, highest category has 14% increase compared lowest category. impact FEV1 can partially explained mediation size equal 20%, P perm = 0.028). Conclusions Small image detected underlie pathology injury pattern dimensions, i.e., thicker different (i.e., narrowing) seen our previous workers exposed nano-scale carbon black aerosol, suggesting constituents other than cores contribute such differences. Our provides some imaging indications understanding pulmonary toxicity combustion derived airborne humans.