Asbestosis Bodies In Sputum And Lung

Our plain-English summary of Asbestosis Bodies In Sputum And Lung, by K.M. Lynch, W.A. Smith (1930).

The study

• Authors: K.M. Lynch, W.A. Smith
• Published: Journal Of The American Medical Association 95:659-661, August (1930)
• Type of article: Journal article
• Our copy: from Johns-Manville's own medical library, J-M no. 003078. The article is still under copyright, so we describe it here rather than post it.

In plain English

This 1930 article described a small series of cases. In two autopsies on Negro men who worked in an asbestos mill, one dead of a gunshot wound after twenty-eight months of such work and one dead of lobar pneumonia after about four and one-half years, microscope study found 'asbestosis bodies' in the lungs. In the first man, areas holding the bodies showed increased fibrous tissue. The authors then examined sputum from four asbestos workers using wet smears and a sodium hydroxide digest, and found bodies in three. The most came from a man who had left asbestos work about a year earlier. None were found, on three occasions, in a man with about fourteen years of asbestos factory work and advanced lung fibrosis, which the authors had not expected. In sputum the bodies measured 1 to 12 microns thick and up to 140 microns long. An iron stain turned them blue, and the authors suggested the iron came from the body, probably the blood. They proposed that sputum examination might help diagnose asbestosis, and said its relation to exposure needed further study.

We wrote this plain-English summary from the full article with the help of AI, and a second AI model checked each sentence against the article. It is not the authors' wording; the abstract and the article are their own account.

What the study did and found

• Design: Case series: two autopsies and sputum examinations of four asbestos workers
• Who was studied: Two Negro men who worked in an asbestos mill and were autopsied around October 1929 (one dead of a gunshot wound, one of lobar pneumonia), plus four current or former asbestos mill or factory workers whose sputum was examined
• Exposure: Work in an asbestos mill or factory. The two autopsied men had twenty-eight months and about four and one-half years of such work. The sputum patients had about ten, about six years (1918 to 1924), roughly two and a half, and about fourteen years. No fiber type is named.
• Main results:
  • In the man who died of a gunshot wound, asbestosis bodies were found in sections from both lungs, with a definite increase of fibrous tissue in the interlobular connective tissue
  • In the man who died of lobar pneumonia, bodies were found in all parts of the lungs, including thrombi of veins and the peribronchial lymph nodes
  • The bodies were first suspected of being a fungus, and were later identified with the objects described by McDonald and Simson
  • Asbestosis bodies were found in the sputum of three of the four asbestos workers examined
  • The first sputum patient (about ten years in asbestos, out of the work about a year) had bodies readily found, and showed by far the greatest number
  • A white man with about fourteen years of asbestos factory work and advanced lung fibrosis had no bodies in his sputum on three occasions, contrary to the authors' expectation
  • In sputum, the bodies measured 1 to 12 microns thick and up to 140 microns long
  • The darker bodies stained deep blue with the Prussian blue reaction for iron. The authors suggested the iron was of tissue origin, probably from the blood
• The authors' conclusion: The authors suggested that sputum examination might prove to be a useful measure in diagnosing asbestosis. They said the link between bodies in sputum and the extent of exposure, or the stage of disease, remained for further study.
• Limitations the authors state:
  • No extensive measurements of the bodies were made
  • The relation of bodies in sputum to the extent of exposure and to the stage of asbestosis was not established

Topics

Medical terms in this study, explained in our Lexicon: Sputum, Fibrosis, Iron Stain (Prussian Blue).

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