Rotating Night Shift Work May Raise Risks of Heart Disease, Lung Cancer: Study

Research can't prove cause-and-effect, but does suggest a link

By Robert Preidt

HealthDay Reporter

MONDAY, Jan. 5, 2015 (HealthDay News) -- Working rotating night shifts may pose a threat to your health, a new study suggests.

The study defined rotating shift work as at least three nights spent working each month, in addition to days and evenings worked in the month.

In the new study, researchers led by Dr. Eva Schernhammer of Harvard Medical School tracked 22 years of data from about 75,000 nurses across the United States.

While the study couldn't prove cause-and-effect, it found that people who worked rotating night shifts for more than five years had an 11 percent increased risk of death from all causes.

The risk of death from heart disease was 19 percent higher among those who worked such shifts for six to 14 years, and 23 percent higher for those who worked such shifts for 15 or more years, Schernhammer's group found.

Nurses who worked rotating night shifts for 15 or more years also had a 25 percent higher risk of death from lung cancer, according to the study.

The findings are to be published in the March issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

According to the study authors, prior research has shown that night shift work is linked with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease and cancer.

"These results add to prior evidence of a potentially detrimental relation of rotating night shift work and health and longevity," Schernhammer, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard and associate epidemiologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, said in a journal news release.

Further research is needed to learn how individual traits might interact with rotating night shift work to harm health, she added.

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PTSD May Raise Women's Risk for Diabetes

Obesity, antidepressants could play a role in the connection, study suggests

By Randy Dotinga

HealthDay Reporter

WEDNESDAY, Jan. 7, 2015 (HealthDay News) -- Women with post-traumatic stress disorder seem more likely than others to develop type 2 diabetes, with severe PTSD almost doubling the risk, a new study suggests.

The research "brings to attention an unrecognized problem," said Dr. Alexander Neumeister, director of the molecular imaging program for anxiety and mood disorders at New York University School of Medicine. It's crucial to treat both PTSD and diabetes when they're interconnected in women, he said. Otherwise, "you can try to treat diabetes as much as you want, but you'll never be fully successful," he added.

PTSD is an anxiety disorder that develops after living through or witnessing a dangerous event. People with the disorder may feel intense stress, suffer from flashbacks or experience a "fight or flight" response when there's no apparent danger.

It's estimated that one in 10 U.S. women will develop PTSD in their lifetime, with potentially severe effects, according to the study.

"In the past few years, there has been an increasing attention to PTSD as not only a mental disorder but one that also has very profound effects on brain and body function," said Neumeister, who wasn't involved in the new study. Among other things, PTSD sufferers gain more weight and have an increased risk of cardiac disease compared to other people, he said.

The new study followed 49,739 female nurses from 1989 to 2008 -- aged 24 to 42 at the beginning -- and tracked weight, smoking, exposure to trauma, PTSD symptoms and type 2 diabetes.

People with type 2 diabetes have higher than normal blood sugar levels. Untreated, the disease can cause serious problems such as blindness or kidney damage.

Over the course of the study, more than 3,000 of the nurses, or 6 percent, developed type 2 diabetes, which is linked to being overweight and sedentary. Those with the most PTSD symptoms were almost twice as likely to develop diabetes as those without PTSD, said study co-author Karestan Koenen, professor of epidemiology at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health in New York City.

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