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682

COGNITIVE FUNCTIONS CHANGES AMONG EGYPTIAN SEWAGE NETWORK WORKERS

Article

Last updated: 22 Jan 2023

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Tags

Occupational diseases

Abstract

Objectives: The current work aimed at investigating the cognitive functions impairment among workers of sewer networks due to exposure to H2S and the relation of this impairment ,if any, to the level of H2S exposure biomarker “urinary thiosulfate". Besides, the validity of using Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE) as screening test for cognitive impairment among the exposed workers was tested.Subjects: The work was conducted among 33 sewage network maintenance male workers and a matched unexposed control group (n= 30).Methods: The participants were subjected to clinical neurological history, estimation of urinary thiosulfate, and assessment of cognitive dysfunction by using neurophysiological (simple reaction time, P300 test) and neuropsychological tests (Wechsler MemoryScale) and frontal executive functions tests. Results: Clinical neurological history revealed significantly higher neurological symptoms
(headache, memory defects, lack of concentration) among exposed workers compared to their controls (P< 0.05). Exposed workers had significantly prolonged simple reaction time and delayed P300 latency and showed poor performance of most of neuropsychological tests. Marked elevation of urinary thiosulfate was observed among the
exposed workers (P< 0.001) but this elevation was not correlated with the duration of exposure or any of the other measured parameters. Exposed workers had significantly lower mean value of MMSE scoring than that of the controls (P<0.001). Conclusion: Exposure to H2S among sewer network workers is associated with cognitive impairment which can be screened by applying MMSE as a simple rapid test for hydrogen sulfide occupationally exposed workers.
  

DOI

10.21608/ejom.2009.682

Keywords

Key words: hydrogen sulfide, sewer networks, Thiosulfate, MMSE, P300, neuropsychological test, frontal executive functions

Authors

First Name

Farahat

Last Name

A.

MiddleName

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Affiliation

Dep. of Industrial Medicine & Occupational Diseases,

Email

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City

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Orcid

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First Name

Kishk

Last Name

A.

MiddleName

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Affiliation

Dep. of Neurology, Faculty of Medicine, Cairo University

Email

-

City

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Orcid

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Volume

33

Article Issue

2

Related Issue

173

Issue Date

2009-07-01

Receive Date

2016-11-09

Publish Date

2009-07-01

Page Start

253

Page End

270

Print ISSN

1110-1881

Online ISSN

2357-058X

Link

https://ejom.journals.ekb.eg/article_682.html

Detail API

https://ejom.journals.ekb.eg/service?article_code=682

Order

10

Type

Study paper

Type Code

126

Publication Type

Journal

Publication Title

Egyptian Journal of Occupational Medicine

Publication Link

https://ejom.journals.ekb.eg/

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Article

Created At

22 Jan 2023