Abstract

In order to evaluate a new test for helping in the diagnosis and evaluation of occupational asthma, 24 workers with occupational asthma were recruited. Besides assessing their respiratory function, their bronchial inflammation was evaluated by sputum induction, a simple method that evaluates bronchial cellularity non-invasively. The results show that the functional and inflammatory parameters of subjects with occupational asthma improve mainly in the 6 months following removal from exposure. Furthermore, it appears that the workers with eosinophilic bronchial inflammation at the time of diagnosis evolve more favourably after removal from exposure than those without this inflammation.