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Query: UMLS:C0010200 (cough)
 23,843 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Organic dust toxic syndrome is a term recently coined to describe a noninfectious, febrile illness associated with chills, malaise, myalgia, a dry cough, dyspnea, headache and nausea which occurs after heavy organic dust exposure. Organic dust toxic syndrome shares many clinical features with acute farmer's lung and other forms of hypersensitivity pneumonitis, including the presence of increased numbers of neutrophils in bronchoalveolar lavage. However, organic dust toxic syndrome differs from acute hypersensitivity pneumonitis in several respects: the chest X-ray does not show infiltrates, severe hypoxemia does not occur, prior sensitization to antigens in the organic dust is not required and there are no known sequelae of physiological significance, such as the recurrent attacks and the pulmonary fibrosis which may be seen with chronic hypersensitivity pneumonitis. Organic dust toxic syndrome is thought to be much more common than farmer's lung. It is important for clinical and investigational purposes that organic dust toxic syndrome be distinguished from acute farmer's lung.
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PMID:Organic dust toxic syndrome: an acute febrile reaction to organic dust exposure distinct from hypersensitivity pneumonitis. 226 97

An acute febrile illness associated with unloading silos occurs more frequently than any other farm associated respiratory illness in mid state New York. This report describes 29 cases of organic dust toxic syndrome (also known as pulmonary mycotoxicosis) occurring in 24 men and one woman with a mean age of 29 years. In 16 instances more than one worker was exposed to the dust, and in 12 of these shared exposures more than one worker became ill. Patients presented 5.3 (SD 3.3) hours after inhalation of organic dust and mould with fever (79%), myalgia (76%), chest tightness (72%), cough (66%), and headache (59%). The mean temperature was 38.7 degrees C and the mean white blood cell count 13.2 X 10(9)/l. In contrast to patients with allergic alveolitis, nearly all these patients had normal breath sounds, chest radiographs, and arterial oxygen saturation. Tests for precipitating antibodies to farmer's lung disease antigens gave negative results in all 26 episodes in which they were done; of these, 10 had no evidence of precipitating antibodies to an aqueous extract of the silage associated with their own illness. Organic dust toxic syndrome appears to be a common and substantial respiratory hazard to young farm workers. Despite being frequently mis-diagnosed as farmer's lung, organic dust toxic syndrome is clearly a distinctly different disease process.
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PMID:Organic dust toxicity (pulmonary mycotoxicosis) associated with silo unloading. 359 53

Pulmonary mycotoxicosis (PM), also termed organic dust toxic syndrome or silo unloader's syndrome, is an acute illness resulting from massive inhalation of microbial toxins in organic dusts. It has not been well described histologically. Three cases of PM are presented in this report. Open lung biopsies were examined in each case. All of the patients were farmers with no prior lung disease. One had burning in his eyes, throat, and chest after exposure to moldy silage; chills, fever, dry cough, malaise, and weakness developed within 24 hours. Two patients presented with fever, progressive dyspnea, cough, and fatigue within 24 hours of emptying a corncrib, cleaning a chicken coop, and baling hay. Bilateral alveolar and interstitial infiltrates on chest roentgenograms and leukocytosis with neutrophilia were observed in all of the three patients. Two patients became hypoxemic and required mechanical ventilation. Histologic examination showed acute and organizing diffuse alveolar damage in two biopsy specimens and an acute bronchopneumonia in the third. One specimen had 1- to 10-microm ovoid organisms demonstrable with methenamine silver stains; cultures grew Fusarium and Penicillium species. The other two biopsy specimens had negative tissue cultures and special stains for organisms, although Penicillium species were grown from a preoperative bronchoalveolar lavage in one case. The two patients on mechanical ventilation recovered completely with high-dose steroids. The third patient recovered without steroids. No patient had residual functional deficits or chest radiographic abnormalities. PM can be distinguished from allergic and infectious diseases common in individuals exposed to large amounts of organic dust by its clinicopathologic features.
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PMID:Pulmonary mycotoxicosis: a clinicopathologic study of three cases. 961 95