U.S. flag An official website of the United States government.
Official websites use .gov

A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS

A lock ( ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

i

Occupational Risks of Recurrent Coronary Heart Disease



Details

  • Personal Author:
  • Description:
    Despite regulatory efforts in many high-income countries, long working hours contribute significantly to the persistence of adverse working conditions on a global scale. According to a report from the International Labour Organization, the global prevalence of people working 48 h and more during a week amounts to some 36%. With the transformation of the modern work due to technological advances and economic globalization, an increase in work load and an extension of irregular, nonstandard forms of employment, including working from home, were reported, aggravating the control and prevention of long working hours. An impressive number of prospective epidemiological studies investigated health-adverse effects of long working hours. Although there is no consistency across different health outcomes, a rather robust body of evidence indicates small elevated relative risks of incident coronary heart disease (CHD) and stroke among people working ≥55 h/week compared with those working 35 to 40 h/week. These small elevations must be evaluated against the frequency of long working hours mentioned and the continued burden of cardiovascular disease among working-age populations. Extended working time often goes along with exposure to stressful material and psychosocial work environments. Specifically, jobs defined by high demand and low control ("job strain") and those defined by high effort and low reward were shown to increase the risk of incident CHD, as well as the risk of recurrent CHD. The paper by Trudel et al. published in this issue of the Journal is the first to analyze associations of these 2 cardiovascular risk factors, long working hours and stressful work, as measured based on job strain, with risk of recurrent CHD in a large sample of patients with post-myocardial infarction who returned to work. This carefully designed longitudinal study demonstrates a substantially increased risk of recurrent CHD (hazard ratio: 1.67; 95% confidence interval: 1.10 to 2.53) among those working ≥55 h/week compared with those working 35 to 40 h/week during a mean observation period of 5.9 years. Moreover, job strain intensifies the effect of long working hours on CHD, such that their combined effect results in an increased hazard ratio of 2.55 (95% confidence interval: 1.30 to 4.98). Strengths of this investigation include valid outcome measures, inclusion of a broad range of confounding factors, a high participation rate during follow-up, and the application of advanced statistical modeling to estimate the effect of exposure time. Because the study sample comprising 967 persons was restricted to patients recruited from 30 Canadian hospitals who survived their first acute myocardial infarction, who were younger than 60 years, and who were economically active during the year before disease onset, the generalization of findings may be somehow limited, in particular because the number of women included in the study was small and because a potentially increased vulnerability of persons with low socioeconomic status could not be explored. ... In conclusion, the study by Trudel et al. provides a new piece of research evidence that work-related factors play an important role in CHD prognosis. Occupational health services are urgently needed to be incorporated into cardiac rehabilitation programs and secondary prevention of CHD. [Description provided by NIOSH]
  • Subjects:
  • Keywords:
  • ISSN:
    0735-1097
  • Document Type:
    Text
  • Funding:
    Grant
  • Genre:
    Journal Article
  • Place as Subject:
  • CIO:
    National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
  • Topic:
    Workplace Safety & Health
  • Location:
    North America
  • Volume:
    77
  • Issue:
    13
  • NIOSHTIC Number:
    nn:20068277
  • Citation:
    J Am Coll Cardiol 2021 Apr; 77(13):1626-1628
  • Contact Point Address:
    Dr. Jian Li, Department of Environmental Health Sciences, Fielding School of Public Health, School of Nursing, University of California, Los Angeles, 650 Charles E. Young Drive South, Los Angeles, California 90095, USA
  • Email:
    jianli2019@ucla.edu
  • Federal Fiscal Year:
    2021
  • Performing Organization:
    University of California Los Angeles
  • Peer Reviewed:
    False
  • Start Date:
    20050701
  • Source Full Name:
    Journal of the American College of Cardiology
  • End Date:
    20270630
  • Collection(s):
  • Main Document Checksum:
    urn:sha-512:6bf25847c4d074175a92ac902e98b2d145f599c7956619dce465a9e6157f7e6c9e49af31f8e54ac1cd7ef4f9acfe7f9d821cf185cbdf6a21c7baffcca605e47d
  • Download URL:
  • File Type:
    Filetype[PDF - 128.14 KB ]
PREVIOUS
ON THIS PAGE
Details
CDC STACKS serves as an archival repository of CDC-published products including scientific findings, journal articles, guidelines, recommendations, or other public health information authored or co-authored by CDC or funded partners.

As a repository, CDC STACKS retains documents in their original published format to ensure public access to scientific information.
BACK TO TOP