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Long hours increased type 2 diabetes risk among manual workers
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There is a 30% increased risk for developing type 2 diabetes among people working more than 55 hours per week doing manual work or other low socioeconomic status jobs, according to recent study findings published in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology.
Mika Kivimäki, PhD, associate professor of epidemiology at the University College London in the United Kingdom, and colleagues conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of four published studies and 19 studies with unpublished data to determine the effects of long working hours (≥55 hours a week) on type 2 diabetes risk. The studies included 222,120 men and women with 4,963 incident cases of diabetes during a mean follow-up of 7.6 years.
Researchers found that participants working low socioeconomic status jobs who worked long hours had about a 30% increased risk for incident diabetes compared with people working normal hours. This increased risk remained strong after excluding shift work, taking other health behaviors and risk factors into account.
No increased risk for diabetes was found among part-time workers (those working <35 hours per week).
“The pooling of all available studies on this topic allowed us to investigate the association between working hours and diabetes risk with greater precision than has previously been possibly,” Kivimäki said in a press release. “Although working long hours is unlikely to increase diabetes risk in everyone, health professionals should be aware that it is associated with a significantly increased risk in people doing low socioeconomic status jobs.”
In an accompanying editorial, Orfeu M. Buxton, PhD, and Cassandra A. Okechukwu, ScD, MPH, both of the Harvard School of Public Health, wrote that the study “provides a solid foundation for both epidemiological and intervention work on diabetes risks.”
“The results remained robust even after controlling for obesity and physical activity, which are often the focus of diabetes risk prevention, suggesting that work factors affecting health behaviors and stress may need to be addressed as part of diabetes prevention,” they concluded.
For more information:
Buxton O. Lancet Diabetes Endocrinol. 2014;doi:10.1016/S2213-8587(14)70201-3.
Kivimäki M. Lancet Diabetes Endocrinol. 2014;doi:10.1016/S2213-8587(14)70178-0.
Disclosure: See the full studies for a complete list of the researchers’ relevant financial disclosures.