室内空気質とシックハウス症候群

抄録

Sick house syndrome is a disorder of nerve function, mainly affecting the central nervous system/autonomic nervous system, caused by a sensitivity reaction induced by exposure to trace amount of deleterious chemical substances present in the living environment. Diagnosis is not easy because pathophysiological understanding of the syndrome is not sufficiently complete. In this syndrome, functional assessment of nerve function is especially relevant. For example, the electronic iriscorder is useful as one of the tests of autonomic nerve functioning in this syndrome. There are many cases of this syndrome in which some abnormality and/or instability of pupillary light reaction, that is primarily caused by functional abnormality of autonomic nerve function, has been observed. Furthermore, evaluation of eye movement by Electro-Oculograph is also very useful, as many patients have some disorder of smooth pursuit movement. Modulation Transfer Function, which evaluates the higher optical center (visual cortex) is also useful, and a decrease in Visual Contrast Sensitivity is often observed. Genetic polymorphism testing of drug metabolizing enzymes, such as CYP, GST, NST, and PON1 are useful in evaluating an inherited sensitivity to chemical substances in the patient. From our latest investigation, differences such as absence, decrease in concentration, and delay in induction of these enzymes are observed in some of the patient groups which are obviously different from healthy people. This is important knowledge leading to possible specification of the genes active in expression of this syndrome. [J Physiol Sci. 2006;56 Suppl:S21]