Proteomics in Occupational Medicine

Dear Colleagues,

Occupational injuries and illnesses are among the five leading causes of morbidity and mortality in the United States and in many other countries. Globally there are 2.3 million deaths annually for reasons attributed to work. The biggest component is linked to work-related diseases: 2 million are linked to work-related diseases and 0.3 million to occupational injuries (Takala et al., 2014). In the United States approximately 2.8 million nonfatal workplace illnesses and injuries were reported in 2018. Many occupational exposures may directly cause, contribute to, exacerbate, or predispose workers to various work-related health problems (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services/Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2020).

Occupational medicine has an important role in the recognition of occupational exposures and in the prevention and treatment of work-related diseases and injuries. A major challenge to current occupational medicine is to identify occupational exposures that are associated with work-related diseases and injuries in the workplace. It is generally accepted that occupational exposures include not only physical, biological, and chemical agents, but also psychosocial stressors sustained in the workplace. When addressing the overall work-related diseases and injuries, it is important to take all exposures into consideration and to understand how they may act together. Originally, occupational exposure in occupational medicine was assessed using biochemical techniques to determine the presence of higher concentrations of toxic compounds in biological samples from employees and the results were used to evaluate potential occupational health risks in the workplace. However, this approach only estimates the presence of harmful agents but does not identify how the agents act on a molecular level to effectively prevent or diminish the risk. Recently, proteomics have become a key to understand pathophysiological processes involving the development of work-related diseases and the regulation of the expression of proteins in these processes. Proteomics methods are useful in occupational medicine in order to provide more accurate diagnostics and exposure identification in the evaluation of occupational risks in the workplace (Muñoz et al., 2010).

This Special Issue of Proteomes welcomes submissions of original research or review articles aiming at deciphering the processes with the use of proteomics tools. Contributions will deal with the identification of proteomics in work-related diseases in contrasting physiological situations as well as with technical advances in the proteomic field of occupational medicine.

References

Takala, J.; Hämäläinen, P.; Saarela, K.L.; Yun, L.Y.; Manickam, K.; Jin, T.W.; Heng, P.; Tjong, C.; Kheng, L.G.; Lim, S.; Lin, G.S. Global estimates of the burden of injury and illness at work in 2012. J. Occup. Environ. Hyg. 2014, 11, 326–337.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services/Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Lifetime Prevalence of Self-Reported Work-Related Health Problems Among U.S. Workers — United States, 2018. MMWR/April 3, 2020/Vol. 69/No. 13. Available online: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/pdfs/mm6913-H.pdf (accessed on 21 December 2021).

Muñoz, B.; Albores, A. The role of molecular biology in the biomonitoring of human exposure to chemicals. Int. J. Mol. Sci. 2010, 11, 4511–4525.

Dr. Xi-Ming Yuan
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Proteomes is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• Biological monitoring
• Work-related diseases
• Occupational exposure
• Occupational toxicology
• Proteomic
• Pathways