TUESDAY, Jan. 13 (HealthDay News) -- The risk of incident stroke is higher among men with job strain-related occupational stress, according to the results of a study of Japanese men published in the Jan. 12 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.
Akizumi Tsutsumi, M.D., of the University of Occupational and Environmental Health in Fukuoka, Japan, and colleagues conducted a study of 6,553 male and female workers in Japan using a questionnaire to elicit information about occupational stress. The cohort was followed-up for 11 years.
There were 147 incident strokes during follow-up, and subjects who reported job strain -- defined as a demanding job and low job control combined -- were twice as likely as their counterparts with low job strain to have a stroke, the researchers report. The association remained even when confounding factors such as age, educational level, smoking status and alcohol consumption were taken into account, the investigators found. However, in women, different categories of job strain did not have an impact on the risk of stroke, the data revealed.
"Most of the literature regarding job strain and cardiovascular diseases relates to white populations, with health outcomes fairly restricted to coronary heart diseases," the authors write. "The relatively higher incidence of stroke among Japanese men may produce sufficient statistical power to detect associations that have not previously been well addressed."
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