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Impact of climate change on wood and woodworkers—Cryptostroma corticale (sooty bark disease): A risk factor for trees and exposed employees

Climate changes have promoted an increased fungal infection of maple trees with Cryptostroma corticale, the causative agent of sooty bark disease. The hosts of C. corticale are maples, and since the early 2000s the fungus has been appearing more frequently in European forests, due to the droughts an...

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Autores principales: Kespohl, Sabine, Riebesehl, Janett, Grüner, Jörg, Raulf, Monika
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9623262/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36330129
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2022.973686
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author Kespohl, Sabine
Riebesehl, Janett
Grüner, Jörg
Raulf, Monika
author_facet Kespohl, Sabine
Riebesehl, Janett
Grüner, Jörg
Raulf, Monika
author_sort Kespohl, Sabine
collection PubMed
description Climate changes have promoted an increased fungal infection of maple trees with Cryptostroma corticale, the causative agent of sooty bark disease. The hosts of C. corticale are maples, and since the early 2000s the fungus has been appearing more frequently in European forests, due to the droughts and hot summers of recent years. Infestation by C. corticale discolors the wood and makes it unusable for further processing, which leads to considerable economic damage in the timber industry. Therefore, the occurrence and spread of sooty bark disease raise serious problems. In addition to forestry and economic problems, the conidiospores of C. corticale can also cause health problems in exposed wood workers and they can trigger hypersensitivity pneumonitis (HP). Since the spores, which are deposited over the entire area under the bark of infected trees, can spread during processing, exposed workers must take special precautions to protect themselves against exposure. If an occupational disease is nevertheless suspected following exposure to C. corticale, valid diagnostics are required to confirm possible HP and derive appropriate therapies and exposure reduction or avoidance. Diagnosis of HP is based on several criteria, one of them is the detection of specific IgG in patient's serum against the potentially triggering antigens, in this case C. corticale antigens. To produce a diagnostic tool to measure C. corticale specific IgG, which is not commercially available so far, spores and mycelial material from ITS-sequenced strains of C. corticale was prepared and analyzed. These biochemically characterized extracts of spore and mycelial antigens were biotinylated and coupled to Streptavidin-ImmunoCAPs. To validate these diagnostic test tools the first step is to measure the concentration of C. corticale specific IgG in sera of healthy non-exposed and healthy exposed subjects to establish cut-off values. Suitable participants were recruited and the individual exposure to C. corticale and symptoms experienced during or after working with infected maple trees were recorded using questionnaires. Finally, diagnostic tools for serological testing in suspected cases of HP by C. corticale were created and evaluated. The following article provides recommendations for the treatment and disposal of infected damaged wood and for occupational health protection procedures. Secondly, the diagnosis of HP induced by exposure to C. corticale as an occupational disease is described including the verification of newly developed serological test tools for antigens of C. corticale.
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spelling pubmed-96232622022-11-02 Impact of climate change on wood and woodworkers—Cryptostroma corticale (sooty bark disease): A risk factor for trees and exposed employees Kespohl, Sabine Riebesehl, Janett Grüner, Jörg Raulf, Monika Front Public Health Public Health Climate changes have promoted an increased fungal infection of maple trees with Cryptostroma corticale, the causative agent of sooty bark disease. The hosts of C. corticale are maples, and since the early 2000s the fungus has been appearing more frequently in European forests, due to the droughts and hot summers of recent years. Infestation by C. corticale discolors the wood and makes it unusable for further processing, which leads to considerable economic damage in the timber industry. Therefore, the occurrence and spread of sooty bark disease raise serious problems. In addition to forestry and economic problems, the conidiospores of C. corticale can also cause health problems in exposed wood workers and they can trigger hypersensitivity pneumonitis (HP). Since the spores, which are deposited over the entire area under the bark of infected trees, can spread during processing, exposed workers must take special precautions to protect themselves against exposure. If an occupational disease is nevertheless suspected following exposure to C. corticale, valid diagnostics are required to confirm possible HP and derive appropriate therapies and exposure reduction or avoidance. Diagnosis of HP is based on several criteria, one of them is the detection of specific IgG in patient's serum against the potentially triggering antigens, in this case C. corticale antigens. To produce a diagnostic tool to measure C. corticale specific IgG, which is not commercially available so far, spores and mycelial material from ITS-sequenced strains of C. corticale was prepared and analyzed. These biochemically characterized extracts of spore and mycelial antigens were biotinylated and coupled to Streptavidin-ImmunoCAPs. To validate these diagnostic test tools the first step is to measure the concentration of C. corticale specific IgG in sera of healthy non-exposed and healthy exposed subjects to establish cut-off values. Suitable participants were recruited and the individual exposure to C. corticale and symptoms experienced during or after working with infected maple trees were recorded using questionnaires. Finally, diagnostic tools for serological testing in suspected cases of HP by C. corticale were created and evaluated. The following article provides recommendations for the treatment and disposal of infected damaged wood and for occupational health protection procedures. Secondly, the diagnosis of HP induced by exposure to C. corticale as an occupational disease is described including the verification of newly developed serological test tools for antigens of C. corticale. Frontiers Media S.A. 2022-10-18 /pmc/articles/PMC9623262/ /pubmed/36330129 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2022.973686 Text en Copyright © 2022 Kespohl, Riebesehl, Grüner and Raulf. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Public Health
Kespohl, Sabine
Riebesehl, Janett
Grüner, Jörg
Raulf, Monika
Impact of climate change on wood and woodworkers—Cryptostroma corticale (sooty bark disease): A risk factor for trees and exposed employees
title Impact of climate change on wood and woodworkers—Cryptostroma corticale (sooty bark disease): A risk factor for trees and exposed employees
title_full Impact of climate change on wood and woodworkers—Cryptostroma corticale (sooty bark disease): A risk factor for trees and exposed employees
title_fullStr Impact of climate change on wood and woodworkers—Cryptostroma corticale (sooty bark disease): A risk factor for trees and exposed employees
title_full_unstemmed Impact of climate change on wood and woodworkers—Cryptostroma corticale (sooty bark disease): A risk factor for trees and exposed employees
title_short Impact of climate change on wood and woodworkers—Cryptostroma corticale (sooty bark disease): A risk factor for trees and exposed employees
title_sort impact of climate change on wood and woodworkers—cryptostroma corticale (sooty bark disease): a risk factor for trees and exposed employees
topic Public Health
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9623262/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36330129
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2022.973686
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