Association between metabolic risk, oxidative stress and rotating shift work in a tertiary health care facility

ContextHealthcare industry employees, work in rotating shift duties to provide 24/7 services. Shift work is known to disrupt circadian rhythm and predispose the employees to metabolic risk and oxidative stress, subsequently increasing the risk for Non-Communicable Diseases. Present study attempts to evaluate this association.AimsTo evaluate the association between metabolic risk and oxidative stress among health care personnel working in rotating night-shift as compared to dayshift.Settings and designCross sectional study.Methods and materialsEligible 124 employees [(night shift (61), Day shift (63)] working in a tertiary care hospital in Bengaluru were randomly selected and tested for anthropometric and laboratory parameters pertaining to metabolic risk and oxidative stress and categorized accordingly using standard criteria. Statistical tests (student t-test) were applied to test for association between shift work, metabolic risk and oxidative stress.ResultsMetabolic risk and Oxidative stress were significantly higher in rotating night shift workers as compared to day shift (p < 0.001) and (p < 0.017) respectively.ConclusionRotating night shift work is associated with increase in metabolic risk and oxidative stress and there is a need to consider this enhanced risk during periodical medical examination and employee health interventions. There is a need for further research to quantify risk for metabolic risk and understand this association in other occupations as well.