The Asbestosis Body

Our plain-English summary of The Asbestosis Body, by S.R. Gloyne (1932).

The study

• Author: S.R. Gloyne
• Published: Lancet 1:1351-1356, June 25 (1932)
• Type of article: Journal article
• Our copy: from Johns-Manville's own medical library, J-M no. 003052. The article is still under copyright, so we describe it here rather than post it.

In plain English

This 1932 article by a pathologist at the City of London Hospital for Diseases of the Heart and Lungs reviewed published work on the asbestosis body and added the author's own observations. The asbestosis body is a golden-yellow coated structure found in the lungs and sputum of asbestos workers. When the author dissolved the bodies in concentrated sulphuric acid, an asbestos fibre appeared at the centre of each. The author described the bodies as forming in stages: material deposited around the fibre, the coating cracked into segments, and then pieces broke away. Blue asbestos was stripped of iron by boiling in hydrochloric acid and injected into six guinea-pigs. In one animal, killed nine months later, typical bodies that gave an iron reaction were found. The author took this to suggest that the iron comes from the body's tissues. The asbestos could not be found at all in four of the six animals. The bodies survived boiling for four hours, but sputum digested with trypsin for one week lost them. Year-long attempts to make the bodies in the test tube failed. The author concluded that the bodies indicate exposure to asbestos dust but are not undeniable evidence of fibrosis.

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: Review of published work on the asbestosis body, combined with the author's own laboratory observations and small animal experiments
• Who was studied: The author's own material: sputum, feces and lung tissue from cases of pulmonary asbestosis (numbers not stated); six guinea-pigs injected with iron-free asbestos; one grey rat caught on asbestos factory premises
• Exposure: Asbestos fibres. In the author's main animal experiment, blue asbestos was boiled in concentrated hydrochloric acid until it gave no iron reaction, then injected into the guinea-pigs.
• Main results:
  • When the bodies were dissolved with concentrated sulphuric acid under the microscope, an asbestos fibre appeared at the centre of each body.
  • From studying many forms, the author described the body as forming by deposition of material around the fibre, then cracking of that material into segments, then fragmentation.
  • In one of the six guinea-pigs, killed nine months after injection of iron-free blue asbestos, a nodule in the thigh muscles contained small but typical asbestosis bodies that gave an iron reaction.
  • In one case of pulmonary asbestosis, the author found asbestosis bodies in the feces; they were scanty and less deeply coloured than usual.
  • Sputum digested with trypsin for one week lost its bodies, but some bodies survived in lung tissue.
  • After sputum was left to autolyse in the incubator for 14 days, only a few very imperfect bodies remained.
  • The bodies resisted boiling for two hours in one experiment and for four hours in another.
  • Hydrochloric acid bleached the yellow colour from the bodies but left a colourless skeleton of the body.
  • Ground-up asbestos fibres exposed for a year to various chemicals did not form true asbestosis bodies. The calcium preparations produced a feathery thickening that did not really resemble them.
  • The author found asbestosis bodies in a guinea-pig six months after exposure.
  • Only one small but typical body was found in the lung of a grey rat caught on asbestos factory premises, although large numbers of fibres were present.
  • The author reasoned that, because these bodies had not been found in any other disease, their presence indicates exposure to asbestos dust. The author also reasoned that bodies in the sputum mean fibres have been in the lung for many weeks at least.
• The authors' conclusion: The author concluded that the presence of the asbestosis body should not be taken as undeniable evidence of fibrosis. In the author's view, it reflects a tissue reaction that may or may not include appreciable fibrosis.
• Limitations the authors state:
  • Very little asbestos was injected in the guinea-pig experiment, and it could not be found at autopsy in four of the six animals.
  • How long the grey rat had been exposed could not be verified.
  • Human cases are a less clear test of how long exposure must last before bodies form, because human exposures are not carefully controlled.

Topics

Medical terms in this study, explained in our Lexicon: Sputum, Crocidolite, Fibrosis.

Browse return to medical research.