Welders are at increased risk for invasive pneumococcal disease
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Welders are at increased risk of pulmonary infection and lobar pneumonia, likely due to significant occupational exposure to metal fumes. We hypothesized that welders would be at increased risk for invasive pneumococcal disease (IPD) compared to the general population. METHODS: A retrospective chart review of all patients with IPD in the province of Alberta, Canada (population approx. 3.3 million) was conducted from 2000 to 2004 to study the epidemiology of IPD. RESULTS: There were 18 cases identified in welders, giving an attack rate of 22.7 cases per 100,000 population per year (95% confidence interval (CI) 12.23-33.23). Compared with an attack rate of 8.7 cases per 100,000 population per year (95% CI 8.10-9.26) for the general adult population between ages 18 and 65 years, there was a 2.7-fold greater incidence of IPD in welders (95% CI 1.67-4.22, p<0.001). There was an increased prevalence of serotypes 4 and 8 compared to the general population. Eight of 18 cases were caused by serotypes in the 7-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine, 11 of 18 cases by serotypes in the 13-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine, and 18 of 18 cases by serotypes in the 23-valent pneumococcal polysaccharide vaccine. Seventeen patients had bacteremic pneumococcal pneumonia and one had meningitis; one person died due to infection. Fifteen of 18 patients were either current or former smokers, which was a higher rate than the general population adjusted for age and gender (odds ratio 2.976, 95% CI 0.908-9.729, p=0.084). CONCLUSIONS: Welders, particularly those who smoke, are at increased risk of IPD and should be considered for routine administration of the pneumococcal polysaccharide vaccine. Ongoing workplace measures to reduce exposure to metal fumes and promote smoking cessation should be reinforced.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".