Ferruginous bodies from Urban and rural dwellers

Type of the bodies and the number of the bodies

Abstract

It has been known fact that the general population as well as asbestos workers have been exposed to asbestos dust. We implied that there were four types of ferruginous bodies including morphologically two types of as -bestos bodies, and that the second type of those were found in the cases from which a large number of ferruginous bodies were extracted. So, in order to access to the sourse of the dust, we intended in the present study to compare both the type and the number of ferrugious bodies which were obtained from the autopsy patients who were urban and rural dwellers.
The first type of ferruginous body, showing a transparent thin central fiber and typical beaded appearance, was extracted from both populations with the same incidence and distribution pattern when divided the cases into the six groups according to the grades for the number of the bodies (0, 1-9, 10-19, 20-49, 50-99, over 100).
The second type of ferruginous bodies, showing transparent central fibers and clubbed ends, were obtained from urban dwellers with significant higher incidence rather than rurals. Furthermore, the cases with more than 50 bodies of the second type in 5g of wet weight of lung tissue were limited to men of urban dwellers.
These results might suggest that occupational exposure may cause on the source of the second type of asbestos bodies, and the general environmental exposure may be considered the sourse of the first type of asbestos bodies. However, asbestiform occurrance of the central fibers remain unknown.
Although an occurrance of the third ferruginous bodies, having black central core and beaded appearance, was significantly high incidence in rural dwellers, the number of the bodies may be too small to consider them one of co-factors involved in inducing lung cancer. The fourth type of ferruginous bodies were extracted very rarely.