ABSTRACT
The term ‘work-related asthma’ (WRA) encompasses occupational asthma (OA), which is asthma caused by a specic agent at the workplace, and work-exacerbated asthma (WEA), which describes pre-existing or coincident asthma exacerbated by non-specic stimuli at the workplace (Malo and Vandenplas, 2011). The American College of Chest Physicians has proposed the following denition of OA (Tarlo et al., 2008):
Occupational asthma refers to de novo asthma or the recurrence of previously quiescent asthma … induced by either sensitization to a specic substance (e.g. an inhaled protein [high-molecularweight (HMW) protein of more than 10 kDa] or a chemical at work [low-molecular-weight (LMW) agent]), which is termed sensitizer-induced OA [or ‘immunologic/allergic OA’ or ‘OA with latency’], or by exposure to an inhaled irritant at work, which is termed irritant-induced OA [or ‘non-immunologic/non-allergic OA’ or ‘OA without latency’].
