In Canada, middle-aged and older workers have a link between shift work and frailty, especially women who work rotating hours, according to a recent study led by York University researchers.
This study was the first to take a thorough or “holistic” look at the relationship between shift work and frailty, despite the fact that there is a significant body of literature that suggests the disruptions to circadian rhythms that shift workers face are associated to a variety of disorders.
“We cannot ignore the negative health outcomes related to shift work, including cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, stroke and certain cancers,” says York Faculty of Health PhD student Durdana Khan, a trainee with the York Centre for Aging and Research and Education. “Our study is the first to investigate the relationship between shift work and frailty for middle-age and older adults.”
For the study, which will be published in the May edition of the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, Khan, along with York professors Heather Edgell, Hala Tamim and Michael Rotondi, and immunologist and epidemiologist Chris Verschoor of the Health Sciences North Research Institute, looked at 48,000 participants across Canada from the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging and followed up at three years to measure for frailty.
Frailty is defined as someone’s likelihood towards disease and death. The researchers used an index that looks at 52 factors that can likely lower lifespan,
