Environmental arsenic epidemiology in the Mekong river basin of Cambodia

Abstract

We investigated relationship of arsenicosis symptoms with total blood arsenic (BAs) and serum albumin (SAlb) of residents in the Mekong River basin of Cambodia. We found that arsenicosis patients had significantly higher BAs and lower SAlb than asymptomatic villagers (Mann-Whitney U test, p < 0.01). Arsenicosis symptoms were found to be 76.4% (1.764 times) more likely to develop among individuals having an SAlb <= 44.3 g L-1 than among those who had an SAlb > 44.3 g L-1 (OR=1.764, 95% CI = 0.999-3.114) and 117.6% (2.176 times) as likely to occur among those with BAs > 5.73 mu g L-1 than for those having BAs <= 5.73 mu g L-1 (OR=2.176, 95% CI = 1.223-3.872). Furthermore, a significant negative correlation was also found between BAs and SAlb (r(s) (199)= -0.354, p < 0.0001). As such, this study suggests that people with low SAlb and/or high BAs are likely to rapidly develop arsenicosis symptoms. (C) 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.