The destruction of circadian rhythms by night shift work affects major circadian genes, which are known to play a role in advancing or killing the cell cycle through tumor suppressor genes. To find out whether night shift work affects the incidence of colorectal cancer, which was found to be associated with long-term night shift work in previous studies, we surveyed effect of night shift work on colorectal polyps that have a higher incidence than colorectal cancer and can progress to colorectal cancer.
To examine the correlation between rotating night shifts and colorectal polyps, a survey was conducted with 299 men aged 40–60 years from two university hospitals. We examined lifestyle, work history, work patterns, and colonoscopy results. The differences in prevalence among the groups was compared, and prevalence ratio (PR) was calculated via generalized linear modeling.
The prevalence of colorectal polyps in night shift and non-shift workers were 53.0% and 33.5%, respectively. After adjusting for age, smoking status, dietary habits, family history of colorectal cancer, obesity, job type, night shift work (PR: 1.13, 95% CI: 1.02–1.25) was a risk factor of colorectal polyps.
The risk of colorectal polyps was greater in night shift workers than non-shift workers. Also risk of colorectal polyp was higher in older group. Our study investigated colorectal polyp instead of colorectal cancer and lacks information about types and gene mutations of colorectal polyps. Further study is needed to clarify effect of night shift work on development of colorectal cancer.
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Recent studies suggest that night shiftwork may increase the risk of prostate cancer and elevated serum prostate-specific antigen (PSA) level. The purpose of this study was to verify whether rotating night shiftwork affects serum PSA level.
This study included 3,195 male production workers who work in a large tire manufacturing factory. Serum PSA levels were measured and the data on related factors were obtained.
The mean serum PSA level was 0.98 ± 0.79 ng/mL. PSA levels were significantly lower in the younger age group, the obese group, and regular exercise group. PSA levels were lower in night shift workers (n = 2,832) compared to day workers (n = 363), but the difference was not statistically significant.
Unlike previous studies, we did not find any evidence that night shiftwork results in an increase in serum PSA levels. Further research and consistent results are needed to elucidate the association between night shiftwork and the effect on the prostate.
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Sleepiness while driving has been regarded as a major cause of death due to traffic accidents. We compared the degree of sleepiness across five different working time periods (first, morning, post-lunch, afternoon, and last) among Korean bus drivers with different shift types (Daily two shift/Alternating day shift).
We interviewed 332 bus drivers with two shift types (Daily two shift, 128; Alternating day shift, 204). The questionnaire included demographic information (age, alcohol consumption and history of disease), a sleep disorder diagnosed by a doctor, job duration, the number of workdays in the past month, average working hours per workday and week, sleepiness while driving (Karolinska Sleepiness Scale), and sleeping time for both workdays and off-days. We conducted log-binomial regression analyses and produced prevalence ratios (PRs) of severe sleepiness (KSS ≥ 7) while driving with 95% confidence intervals (95% CI) to identify the difference in sleepiness for five working times between both groups.
For the first and morning periods, there were no statistically significant differences in the KSS scores between the two groups. However, from lunch to last driving, drivers with Alternating day shift had a much larger proportion of severe sleepiness than those on Daily two shift. Thirteen (10.2%), 2 (1.6%) and 7 (5.5%) Daily two shift workers reported severe sleepiness in the post-lunch, afternoon and last periods. In contrast, 81 (39.7%), 63 (30.9%) and 64 (31.4%) of Alternating day shift drivers experienced severe sleepiness during the post-lunch, afternoon and last driving periods (
We found that Alternating day shift bus drivers suffered from more sleepiness while driving from lunch to last driving than Daily two shift bus drivers. This difference may be because Alternating day shift drivers had more irregular work schedules and longer working hours per day and week.
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Previous studies have reported the effects of direction of shift rotation on sleep, however, the findings are inconsistent. In this study, we investigated sleep quality related to direction of shift rotation using large-scale data from shiftwork-specific health examinations of electronics workers.
This study included 4750 electronics workers working in a rotating 3-shift system who completed a medical examination for shift workers survey from January 1 to December 31, 2014, at a general hospital. The subjects were categorized into one of two groups according to direction of shift rotation. We compared sleep quality index between the subjects who worked in forward rotation and backward rotation systems.
Backward rotation was positively associated with prevalence of poor sleep quality. In the multivariable-adjusted model, when comparing backward rotation to forward rotation, the odds ratio (OR) with 95 % confidence interval (95 % CI) for poor sleep quality was 1.95 (1.58–2.41). After stratifying by gender, the ORs (95 % CIs) for poor sleep quality in male and female was 1.92 (1.47–2.49) and 2.13 (1.47–3.08), respectively. In subgroup analyses, backward rotation was significantly associated with poor sleep quality in workers ≥30 years of age compared with workers <30 years of age (adjusted OR 2.60 vs. 1.89, respectively;
Our study supports that a backward rotation system is associated with poor sleep quality. Forward rotation systems should be considered to reduce sleep problems.
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