TUESDAY, July 29, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- Shift work is associated with an increased risk of diabetes mellitus (DM), according to research published online July 16 in Occupational & Environmental Medicine.
Yong Gan, M.D., of the Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan, China, and colleagues conducted a meta-analysis of 12 observational studies with 28 independent reports; 226,652 participants were involved, including 14,595 patients with DM. The authors sought to assess the association between shift work and DM.
The researchers found that ever exposure to shift work was associated with increased risk of DM (pooled adjusted odds ratio [OR], 1.09; 95 percent confidence interval [CI], 1.05 to 1.12; P = 0.014). Subgroup analysis showed a stronger association between shift work and risk of DM for men (OR, 1.37; 95 percent CI, 1.20 to 1.56) than for women (OR, 1.09; 95 percent CI, 1.04 to 1.14) (P for interaction = 0.01). Compared with typical daytime schedules, all shift work schedules, except for mixed shifts and evening shifts, were associated with increased risk of DM, and the difference between these shift work schedules was significant (P for interaction = 0.04).
"Given the increasing prevalence of shift work worldwide and the heavy economic burden of DM, the results of our study provide practical and valuable clues for the prevention of DM and a study of its etiology," the authors write.
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