Heart health of shift workers linked to body clock
2021-04-16
(Press-News.org) Sophia Antipolis - 16 April 2021: Working hours that deviate from an individual's natural body clock are associated with greater cardiovascular risk, according to research presented at ESC Preventive Cardiology 2021, an online scientific congress of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC).1
"Our study found that for each hour the work schedule was out of sync with an employee's body clock, the risk of heart disease got worse," said study author Dr. Sara Gamboa Madeira of the University of Lisbon, Portugal.
At least 20% of European employees work atypical hours or shifts,2 and growing scientific evidence associates these with deleterious cardiovascular outcomes.3 A number of explanations have been proposed, including sleep disruption and unhealthy behaviours. This study focused on the role of circadian misalignment, which is the difference between the "social clock" (e.g. work schedules) and the individual "biological clock".
Dr. Gamboa Madeira explained: "We all have an internal biological clock which ranges from morning types (larks), who feel alert and productive in the early morning and sleepy in the evening, to late types (owls), for whom the opposite is true - with most of the population falling in between. Circadian misalignment occurs when there is a mismatch between what your body wants (e.g. to fall asleep at 10pm) and what your social obligations impose on you (e.g. work until midnight)."
The study included 301 blue collar workers, all performing manual picking activity in the distribution warehouses of a retail company in Portugal. Staff always worked either early morning (6am-3pm), late evening (3pm-midnight), or night (9pm-6am) shifts. Participants completed a questionnaire on sociodemographic factors (age, sex, education), occupational factors (work schedule, seniority), and lifestyle factors and had their blood pressure and cholesterol measured.
The Munich ChronoType Questionnaire was used to assess sleep duration, and to estimate each individual's internal biological clock (also called chronotype). It was also used to quantify the amount of circadian misalignment (i.e. the mismatch between an individual's biological clock and working hours) - referred to as social jetlag. Participants were divided into three groups according to hours of social jetlag: 2 hours or less, 2-4 hours, 4 hours or more.
The researchers used the European relative risk SCORE chart which incorporates smoking, blood pressure and cholesterol to calculate relative cardiovascular risk. Relative risk ranges from 1 (non-smoker with healthy blood pressure and cholesterol) to 12 (smoker with very high blood pressure and cholesterol). In this study, a relative risk of 3 or more was considered "high cardiovascular risk". The researchers then investigated the association between social jetlag and high cardiovascular risk.
The average age of participants was 33 years and 56% were men. Just over half (51%) were smokers, 49% had high cholesterol, and 10% had hypertension. One in five (20%) were classified as high cardiovascular risk. Some 40% had a short sleep duration on workdays (6 hours or less). The average social jetlag was nearly 2 hours. In most workers (59%), social jetlag was 2 hours or less, while for 33% of staff it was 2-4 hours, and in 8% it was 4 hours or more.
A higher level of social jetlag was significantly associated with greater odds of being in the high cardiovascular risk group. The odds of being classified high cardiovascular risk increased by 31% for each additional hour of social jetlag, even after adjusting for sociodemographic, occupational, lifestyle, and sleep characteristics and body mass index.
Dr. Gamboa Madeira said: "These results add to the growing evidence that circadian misalignment may explain, at least in part, the association found between shift work and detrimental health outcomes. The findings suggest that staff with atypical work schedules may need closer monitoring for heart health. Longitudinal studies are needed to investigate whether late chronotypes cope better with late/night shifts and earlier chronotypes to early morning schedules, both psychologically and physiologically."
INFORMATION:
Authors: ESC Press Office
Tel: +33 (0)4 89 87 20 85
Mobile: +33 (0)7 8531 2036
Email: press@escardio.org
Follow us on Twitter @ESCardioNews
Notes to editor
Funding: Dr. Gamboa Madeira's PhD programme is co-funded by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) and by companies associated with the programme (research grant PDE/BDE/127787/2016).
Disclosures: None.
References and notes
1Abstract title: Circadian misalignment is associated with a high cardiovascular risk among shift workers: is this an opportunity for prevention in occupational settings?
2Eurofound. Sixth European Working Conditions Survey - Overview report (2017 update). Luxembourg, 2017. doi:10.2806/422172.
3Rivera AS, Akanbi M, O'Dwyer LC, McHugh M. Shift work and long work hours and their association with chronic health conditions: A systematic review of systematic reviews with meta-analyses. PLoS One. 2020;15:e0231037. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0231037.
About the European Association of Preventive Cardiology
The European Association of Preventive Cardiology (EAPC) is a branch of the ESC. Its mission is to promote excellence in research, practice, education and policy in cardiovascular health, primary and secondary prevention.
About ESC Preventive Cardiology 2021 #ESCPrev2021
ESC Preventive Cardiology 2021, formerly EuroPrevent, is the leading international congress on preventive cardiology and the online annual congress of the European Association of Preventive Cardiology (EAPC) of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC).
About the European Society of Cardiology
The European Society of Cardiology brings together health care professionals from more than 150 countries, working to advance cardiovascular medicine and help people lead longer, healthier lives.
Information for journalists about registration for ESC Preventive Cardiology 2021
ESC Preventive Cardiology 2021 takes place 15 to 17 April online. Explore the scientific programme.
Free registration applies only to accredited press.
Credentials: A valid press card or appropriate letter of assignment with proof of three recent published articles (cardiology or health-related or referring to a previous ESC event). Read the ESC media and embargo policy.
The ESC Press Office will verify the documents and confirm by email that your press accreditation is valid.
The ESC Press Office decision is final regarding all press registration requests.
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2021-04-16
Rare diseases are sometimes the most difficult to treat because of a lack of research and fewer participants to study.
An example would be those who have Pompe disease, a genetic condition when a body can't make a protein that breaks down a complex sugar, called glycogen, for energy. Too much glycogen builds up and damages muscles and organs. The disease causes muscle weakness and trouble breathing and can affect the heart and muscles.
In the case of Pompe disease, however, University of Cincinnati researchers have found a newer, more effective treatment for the rare condition that could become the new standard of care.
Hani Kushlaf, MD, an associate professor in both the Department of Neurology and Rehabilitation Medicine and the ...
2021-04-16
COVID-19 needs no introduction. Last year, the disease, which is caused by the virus SARS-CoV-2, reached every continent across the globe. By the end of March 2021, there had been an estimated 128 million cases recorded with almost three million of these being fatal. As scientists' race to develop vaccines and politicians coordinate their distribution, fundamental research on what makes this virus so successful is also being carried out.
Within the Mathematics, Mechanics, and Materials Unit at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST), postdoctoral researcher, Dr. Vikash Chaurasia, and Professor Eliot Fried have been using energy minimization techniques to look at charged proteins on biological particles. Previously they researched ...
2021-04-16
Researchers from University of British Columbia, Emory University, and New York University published a new paper in the Journal of Marketing that investigates the relationship between branding and counter-marketing in the cigarette industry.
The study, forthcoming in the Journal of Marketing, is titled "Investigating the Effects of Excise Taxes, Public Usage Restrictions, and Anti-Smoking Ads across Cigarette Brands" and is authored by Yanwen Wang, Michael Lewis, and Vishal Singh.
While the goal of marketing is usually to boost purchase rates and strengthen relationships between consumers and brands, counter-marketing is an increasingly common strategy for reducing the consumption of "vice" goods such as cigarettes. Counter-marketing activities may ...
2021-04-16
A past COVID-19 infection does not completely protect against reinfection in young people, according to an observational study of more than 3,000 healthy members of the US Marines Corps most of whom were aged 18-20 years, published in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine journal.
The authors say that despite previous infection and the presence of antibodies, vaccination is still necessary to boost immune responses, prevent reinfection, reduce transmission, and that young people should take up the vaccine wherever possible.
In the study, between May and November 2020, around 10% (19 out of 189) of participants who were previously infected with SARS-CoV-2 (seropositive) became reinfected, compared with new infections in 50% (1,079 out of 2,247) ...
2021-04-16
There is consistent, strong evidence that the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19, is predominantly transmitted through the air, according to a new assessment published today in the medical journal Lancet. Therefore, public health measures that fail to treat the virus as predominantly airborne leave people unprotected and allow the virus to spread, according to six experts from the UK, USA and Canada, including Jose-Luis Jimenez, chemist at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) and University of Colorado Boulder.
"The evidence supporting airborne transmission is overwhelming, and evidence supporting large droplet transmission is almost ...
2021-04-15
Neurological disorders are the number one cause of disability in the world, leading to seven million deaths each year. Yet few treatments exist for these diseases, which progressively diminish a person's ability to move and think.
Now, a new study suggests that some of these neurological disorders share a common underlying thread. Staufen1, a protein that accumulates in the brains of patients with certain neurological conditions, is linked to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), or Lou Gehrig's disease, along with other neurological disorders, including Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and Huntington's disease, according to University of Utah Health scientists.
The findings connect Staufen1 ...
2021-04-15
ITHACA, N.Y. - Since state austerity policies initiated a potable water crisis seven years ago in Flint, Michigan, public health monitoring has focused on potential developmental deficits associated with lead exposure in adolescents or fetuses exposed in utero.
New research from Cornell and the University of Michigan offers the first comprehensive evidence that the city's adult residents suffered a range of adverse physical and mental health symptoms potentially linked to the crisis in the years during and following it, with Black residents affected disproportionately.
In a survey of more than 300 residents, 10% reported having been diagnosed by a clinician with elevated ...
2021-04-15
PASADENA, Calif. -- The numbers of recommended vaccine doses, including measles vaccine, administered to children decreased dramatically after the declaration of a national state of emergency on March 13, 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a Kaiser Permanente study published in Pediatrics. While the decrease was lower and recovered in children under 2 years of age, it was more severe and persistent in older children.
"When vaccination rates decline, we worry about an increase in vaccine-preventable diseases that can be harmful to children," said the study's lead author, Bradley Ackerson, MD, a Kaiser Permanente South Bay Medical Center pediatric infectious disease specialist and an investigator with the Kaiser Permanente Southern ...
2021-04-15
Two MIT professors have proposed a new approach to estimating the risks of exposure to Covid-19 under different indoor settings. The guideline they developed suggests a limit for exposure time, based on the number of people, the size of the space, the kinds of activity, whether masks are worn, and the ventilation and filtration rates. Their model offers a detailed, physics-based guideline for policymakers, businesses, schools, and individuals trying to gauge their own risks.
The guideline, appearing this week in the journal PNAS, was developed by Martin .Z. Bazant, professor of chemical engineering and applied mathematics, and John W. M. Bush, professor of applied mathematics. They stress that one key feature of their model, which has received less attention in existing public-health policies, ...
2021-04-15
URBANA, Ill. - Australian pineapple, Danish trout, and Midwestern U.S. corn farmers are not often lumped together under the same agricultural umbrella. But they and many others who raise crops and animals face a common problem: excess nitrogen in drainage water. Whether it flows out to the Great Barrier Reef or the Gulf of Mexico, the nutrient contributes to harmful algal blooms that starve fish and other organisms of oxygen.
But there's a simple solution that significantly reduces the amount of nitrogen in drainage water, regardless of the production system or location: denitrifying bioreactors.
"Nitrogen pollution from farms is relevant around the world, ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
[Press-News.org] Heart health of shift workers linked to body clock
