Respiratory Disease among workers in the Salmon processing industry

At our occupational medicine outpatient clinic, we experience an increase in patients referred with airway symptoms working with salmon processing. Many of them have asthma caused by their work, which is a disease referred to as occupational asthma. The scope of the problem is unknown, and we do not know what factor in the work environment that causes the disease, but some of the patients are allergic to salmon meat protein. Since December 2019 we have included all patients working with salmon processing who are referred with airway symptoms in a register. The study is planned to run until 2029, and we plan to include in total 50-100 patients. Allergy tests and lung function tests are carried out on all study participants. We want to find out how many of the referred patients who have asthma caused by work. Furthermore, we want to showcase symptom presentation, work histories and immunological findings in patients with occupational asthma caused by salmon, in order to delineate different phenotypes and indicate possible disease mechanisms.