Association Of Serum IgA, IgG, IgE, And TNF-α Changes With Urinary 1-OHPyr Among Coke-oven Workers

Coke-oven emissions with large amount of CO₂ ,SO₂ ,powder dust, benzene, methylbenzene and PAHs may be formed during the coke production process, which lead to some respiratory diseases like occupational cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, etc. Besides their carcinogenic properties, in vitro studies revealed that PAHs had immunotoxicity as well. The main cause for these diseases are associated with Pyrene, one of 4-ring PAHs, is often found in the environmental and primarily metabolized to 1-hydroxypyrene(1-OHPyr) in urine, and many investigaters suggested that it maybe a suitable biomarker for the mornitoring exposure to PAHs in worker site.In this study, eighty six coke-oven workers in a coke factory were chosen as PAHs exposed group and thirty five non-exposed to workers PAHs located 1.5km from coke-oven factory were selected as control group. The personal information for subjects such as exposure history, concentration of exposure, age, year of employment, smoking, alcohol drinking and regular intake of vitamins, allergy history of food/drugs were collected with questionnaires. Humoral immunity were evaluated by measuring serum IgA, IgG, IgE, and TNF-α, meanwhile , urinary 1 -OHPyr levels were determined at the end of a work shift. The main results are as follows:1. The urinary 1-OHPyr concentrations in coke oven-workers were significantly higher than those in nonexposed workers (6.73,5.62,2.72,and 2.12μmol/mol creatinine for topside workers, sideoven workers, bottom side workers and control, respectively.) Significant correlation was found between different exposure levels and urinary 1 -OHPyr(Spearman correlation coefficient=0.727, P <0.001 ).2. The concentration of 1-OHPyr changes in work site was mainly associated with exposure levels of workers caculated in multivariate regression model. Heavy smoking (≥20cigarettes/day) influenced urinary 1 -OHPyr concentration in coke-oven workers.3. The concentration of serum IgE and TNF-αwere 150.1IU/ml and 30.7pg/ml in coke-oven workers, respectively , which were significantly higher than that of non-exposed workers (GM=94.1 IU/ml and 17.7pg/ml, P=0.04 and P <0.001). No significant difference in serum IgG and IgA levels between coke-oven workers and control group.4. The multivariate regression model for serum IgE concentration showed that coke-oven emissions and smoking index were the main factors inducing serum IgE concentration change. Significant difference in serum IgE levels among three groups (smoking index≤100;>100 and ≤200;>200) (P=0.005).The multivariate regression model for TNF-αconcentration showed that coke-oven emissions were the main factors inducing TNF-αconcentration change.5. The association between serum TNF-αconcentration and urinary 1-OHPyr transformed by Log₁₀ were weak linear dependence (R=0.316 , P<0.001).In conclusion, there was a significant association between different exposure levels and urinary 1-OHPyr concentration in coke-oven workers. Urinary 1-OHPyr concentration in coke-oven workers could be used as biological monitoring indicator to evaluate PAHs exposure of coke-oven workers and smoking was a mixture factor. Meanwhile, PAHs exposure effected the immune responses in coke-oven workers. More samples are needed to investigate the relationship between TNF-αconcentration and urinary 1-OHPyr concentrations in coke-oven workers.