Time to Onset of Paresthesia Among Community Members Exposed to the World Trade Center Disaster

Sujata Thawani, Bin Wang, Yongzhao Shao, Joan Reibman and Michael Marmor
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Sujata Thawani: Department of Neurology, New York University School of Medicine, New York, NY 10017, USA
Bin Wang: Department of Population Health, New York University School of Medicine, New York, NY 10016, USA
Yongzhao Shao: Department of Population Health, New York University School of Medicine, New York, NY 10016, USA
Joan Reibman: Department of Environmental Medicine, New York University School of Medicine, New York, NY 10016, USA
Michael Marmor: Department of Neurology, New York University School of Medicine, New York, NY 10017, USA

IJERPH, 2019, vol. 16, issue 8, 1-11

Abstract: We examined whether time to onset of paresthesia was associated with indicators of severity of World Trade Center (WTC) exposure. We analyzed data from 3411 patients from the Bellevue Hospital—WTC Environmental Health Center. Paresthesia was defined as present if the symptom occurred in the lower extremities with frequency “often” or “almost continuous.” We plotted hazard functions and used the log-rank test to compare time to onset of paresthesia between different exposure groups. We also used Cox regression analysis to examine risk factors for time-to-paresthesia after 9/11/2001 and calculate hazard ratios adjusted for potential confounders. We found significantly elevated hazard ratios for paresthesia for (a) working in a job that required cleaning of WTC dust in the workplace; and (b) being heavily exposed to WTC dust on September 11, 2001, after adjusting for age, race/ethnicity, depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, and body mass index. These observational data are consistent with the hypothesis that exposure to WTC dust or some other aspect of cleaning WTC dust in the workplace, is associated with neuropathy and paresthesia. Further neurological evaluations of this and other WTC-exposed populations is warranted.

Keywords: paresthesia; neuropathic symptoms; Cox regression; hazard function; World Trade Center exposure (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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