• Ross Summer and Phoebe Chun.
• Division of Pulmonary, Allergy and Critical Care, Department of Medicine, Sidney Kimmel Medical College and the Jane and Leonard Korman Respiratory Institute Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia, PA, USA. Electronic address: Ross.Summer@Jefferson.edu.
• Am. J. Med. Sci. 2024 Sep 3.

AbstractInterstitial lung disease (ILD) represents a heterogeneous group of disorders characterized by inflammation and fibrosis of the pulmonary interstitium. Risk factors for ILD include various environmental exposures and identifying specific exposures offers a point of intervention for preventing disease. Here, we present several cases of patients who worked in the dry-cleaning business and have ILD or abnormalities consistent with early ILD on chest CT imaging. While this report does not attempt to establish causality, we hypothesize that exposure to the industrial solvent tetrachloroethylene may serve as a contributing factor given its links to epithelial injury, inflammation, redox imbalance and apoptosis. We hope that this report serves to not only inform readers of this possible connection between dry cleaning and ILD but also lay the foundation for additional studies examining the effects of tetrachloroethylene on the lung.Copyright © 2024 Southern Society for Clinical Investigation. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

4 keywords...

hide…