Associations between occupational and environmental exposures and organ involvement in sarcoidosis: a retrospective case-case analysis.

Background: Sarcoidosis most commonly affects lungs and intrathoracic lymph nodes, but any other organ can be involved. In epidemiological studies, many occupational and environmental exposures have been linked to sarcoidosis but their relationship with the disease phenotype has barely been studied.

Objective: To investigate how occupational and environmental exposures prior to diagnosis relate to organ involvement in patients with sarcoidosis METHODS: We retrospectively studied patients seen at a sarcoidosis clinic between 2017 and 2020.

Clinical characteristics of sarcoidosis patients in Belgium.

Background: Sarcoidosis is a non-caseating granulomatous disease, mostly affecting previously healthy persons in their fourth and fifth decade. In Belgium, there is a paucity of epidemiological data concerning sarcoidosis and it is unknown to what respect national data on sarcoidosis relates to the global epidemiology of the disease.

Objectives: In this cohort study we describe the patient population in an academic center of reference, serving both as a regional care center and a center for a tertiary referral.