Cleaning products are often considered as irritants, but those in spray form contain perfumes which may be sensitizers.

We aimed to evaluate the hypotheses of non-immunological and immunological mechanisms, by which irritant and sprayed (sensitizer) cleaning products may affect asthma, by assessing their use at home in association with respiratory endotypes.

Cross-sectional analyses were conducted on 1,039 adults from the French Epidemiological study on the Genetics and Environment of Asthma (EGEA, mean age: 44 years, 54% women). Household use of cleaning products was self-reported by questionnaire. Five respiratory endotypes were determined by a cluster analysis (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33268339/), 2 in participants without asthma (NA1: asymptomatic; NA2: symptomatic) and 3 in those with current asthma (CA1: adult-onset, poor lung function, neutrophilic inflammation; CA2: middle-age asthma, rhinitis, low Immunoglobulin E level; CA3: allergic childhood-onset). Multinomial logistic regressions adjusted for age, smoking status and gender were performed to estimate associations between the use of irritants/sprays (ref: no weekly use) and endotypes (ref: NA1).

A daily use of sprays (13%) was associated with CA2 (OR=1.64[0.97-2.76]). The weekly use of ?2 sprays (16%) was associated with CA1 (OR=2.60[1.13-5.97]) and CA2 (OR=1.71[1.04-2.80]). No significant association was observed for irritants. An analysis restricted to women showed more pronounced associations for sprays and a daily use of irritants was associated with CA2 (OR=2.48[1.21-5.11]).

Weekly use of sprays was associated with two asthma endotypes, but our results did not confirm the hypotheses on the underlying mechanisms.