Osteoarthritis of the hip joint and farm work

Different types of farming and farm work were studied in relation to the occurrence of osteoarthritis of the hip joint in a cohort of farmers.

A group of 427 farmers with hip joint osteoarthritis were identified together with a matched control group of farmers without hip or knee problems. All were invited to an interview and physical examination. After a dropout of 10%, and removing those who had had predisposing diseases or trauma, the observations for 369 pairs were available for analyses.

Farmers with larger dairy and swine confinement operations (sows) had an increased risk of acquiring osteoarthritis of the hip. In a logistic regression multivariate model, those who milked more than 40 cows daily had an increase in risk (OR = 4.5, 95% CI 1.9-11.0) in relation to those who did not work in dairy production. Those who had worked more than 5 hr daily in animal barns over a long period of time also had an increase in risk (OR = 13.3, 95% CI 1.2-145.0) in relation to those who did not work with animals. In another model, those who had large farm areas (>100 ha) had a significantly decreased risk (OR = 0.14, 95% CI 0.05-0.43) in relation to those who had smaller farm areas.

Farmers operating farms with large plant production area and few animal contacts had a significantly lower risk of incurring osteoarthritis of the hip than did farmers in general. The presence of animal production showed a significant positive relationship to the risk of developing hip joint osteoarthritis. Am. J. Ind. Med. 45:202-209, 2004.