| Objectives To exposure the change and relationship of silicon, CC16 and tumor necrosis factor-α(TNF-α) at different stages in workers exposed to silica and to provide theoretical clue for silicosis early diagnosis and screening.Methods An iron mine staff was divided into five groups: workers exposed to silicious dust more than 1 years were selected as silica exposure group(n=918), the patients who had not yet been diagnosed with silicosis served as observing group(n=35), diagnosed silicosis patients served as our patient group(n=33), those who quited form dust exposed for more than 1 years as our escaped group(n=54) and staff without silica exposure served as our control group(n=120). The silica exposure group was further divided into subgroups by different dust exposed time. All the people are male and come from the same iron mine. We also collected their general information by questionnaire we made ourselves. The content including: name, gender, age, smoking and alcohol consumption, the diagnosis of occupational history, medicai history, working hours, exposure time to silica dust, working environment, protective measures, X-ray detection results, pulmonary function results and so on. 1.5 ml EP tube anticoagulant was used to collect the blood samples and 15 ml centrifugal tube was used to collec the urine samples. All the samples were put into-20 ℃ refrigerator waiting for test. Inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry(ICP-MS) was used to detect serum silicon and urine silicon and ELISA was used to determine the levels of CC16 and tumor necrosis factor-α(TNF-α). All data were expressed as sx ±. The statistics methods include ANOVA, t test and χ2 test. P < 0.05 was considered statistically significant.Results 1 Compared with control group, the levels of serum silicon, urine silicon in silica exposure group, observing group, patients group and escaped group were increased and silica exposure group had the highest content of silicon, but in silicosis patient group the results was not sinificantly increased(P>0.05), The levels of serum silicon, urine silicon in escaped group were decreasing compared with silica exposure group. 2 Comparing with control group, the levels of serum CC16 in these groups were reduced and patients group had the lowest content(P<0.05); and the levels of TNF-α in silica exposed group, observing group, patients group were increased, and silica exposed group had the highest content of TNF-α. 3 In the subgroups of silica exposure group, the levels of serum silicon,urine silicon were increased comparing with control group and reached the max value after exposure to silica dust for 1~5 years, even for those who exposed to silica dust less than one years, the contents of urine silicon had statistical differences(P < 0.05). 4 Comparing with control group, the levels of CC16 in deffirent groups were decreased and had significant differences when workers exposed to silicious dust for 1~5 years(P < 0.05). The levels of TNF-α in deffirent groups were all increased and the levels of TNF-α had significant differences when workers exposed to silicious dust for 6~10 years(P < 0.05). 5 The silicon detection results were further analysed by two years exposed limition, the results showed that the level of serum silicon had significant differences compared with control group(P < 0.05) and getting the max value at 5 year. 6 In different working type, blasting, roughnecks and mining engineering workers had much higher levels of blood silicon and urine silicon compared with other types.Conclusions The level of silicon in workers had obviously change in the early stage of exposure to silica dust(less than one year) and the levels of CC16 and TNF-α had also significant change with the exposure time extension, but the change of CC16 was prior to the TNF-α, which indicated combined application of these indexes could have important reference value for early diagnosis and screening of silicosis. |
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