Factors impacting on the excess arseniasis prevalence due to indoor combustion of high arsenic coal in a hyperendemic village.

Background: A few villages in Southwest Guizhou, China represented a unique case of arseniasis due to indoor combustion of high arsenic-content coal. The present study is aimed to analyze the contribution of possible factors or of their combination to excess prevalence of arseniasis in the exposed population.

Methods: An epidemiological investigation was conducted in all the members of three large ethnic, patrilineal clans in one of the hyperendemic villages (702 residents in 178 families, including 408 Han and 294 Hmong) where farmers of different ethnic origin have been living together in the same village for generations.

Arseniasis prevalence and mortality in a multiethnic, endemic township in Guizhou, China.

Objective: Farmers in Southwest Guizhou Autonomous Prefecture, China, represent a unique case of arseniasis, which is related to indoor combustion of high arsenic-containing coal instead of to arsenic-contaminated drinking water. A significant difference in the prevalence of arseniasis was observed in two neighboring ethnic clans in one village. The question arose whether the ethnicity-dependent difference observed in this village was more widely spread throughout the whole township.

[Research into methylation of p16 gene in the patients suffering from coal-burnt arsenism in Xingren County Guizhou Province].

Objective: To probe into the situation and significance of p16 gene CPG island methylation in patients with arseniasis caused by coal-burning pollution.

Methods: DNA was extracted using the Phenol-Chloroform method from leukocytes of 51 patients suffered from coal-burnt arsenism and 52 healthy volunteers. The quantity of the DNA was determined by UV spectrophotometry.

A follow-up study of mortality among the arseniasis patients exposed to indoor combustion of high arsenic coal in Southwest Guizhou Autonomous Prefecture, China.

Objective: This study was directed to ascertain the mortality of a group of arseniasis patients in an endemic rural township in Southwest China, where the residents were exposed for decades to indoor combustion of high arsenic coal.

Methods: All the diagnosed arseniasis cases registered in 1991 were defined as the target population, which were assigned to three symptom subgroups by the severity of dermal lesions. The death cases were surveyed and checked.

Glutathione S-transferases M1 and T1 polymorphisms and arsenic content in hair and urine in two ethnic clans exposed to indoor combustion of high arsenic coal in Southwest Guizhou, China.

A total of 2,402 cases of arsenic-related skin lesions (as of 2002) in a few villages of China's Southwest Guizhou Autonomous Prefecture represent a unique case of endemic arseniasis related with indoor combustion of high arsenic coal. A significant difference of skin lesion prevalence was observed between two clans of different ethnicities (Hmong and Han) in one of the hyperendemic villages in this prefecture. This study was focused on a possible involvement of GST T1 and M1 polymorphisms in risk modulation of skin lesions and in the body burden of As in this unique case of As exposure.