Study Ties Shift Work, Genetic Risks With Type 2 Diabetes

A new study has linked shift work, particularly night work, with diabetes risk and has also created a potential genetic risk assessment for type 2 diabetes. The study, conducted at Brigham and Women's Hospital in the United Kingdom, used data from 270,000 people, about 70,000 of which had in-depth lifetime employment data and 44,000 of whom had usable genetic data. The study group included one of the largest samples of type 2 diabetics ever researched.

"We see a dose-response relationship between frequency of night shift work and type 2 diabetes, where the more often people do shift work, the greater their likelihood of having the disease, regardless of genetic predisposition," said co-first author Céline Vetter, PhD who conducted this work while at the Channing Division of Network Medicine at BWH, along with co-first author Hassan S. Dashti, PhD, RD. Vetter is now an assistant professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder. "This helps us understand one piece of the puzzle: frequency of night shift work seems to be an important factor."


Night shift and shift work can raise type 2 diabetes risk significantly, genetic factors can mean four times the risk.

Compared to day workers, the researchers found, shift workers and those working non-permanent night shifts were about 44 percent more likely to have type 2 diabetes. The team also considered over 100 genetic variations and found that certain of those were very connected to type 2 diabetes independently of the shift work analysis.

Those with certain genetic markers, the team learned, could have four times the likely risk of type 2 diabetes. The team created a "genetic risk analysis" based on those 100 tested genetic variants.

The study was published in the journal Diabetes Care.

Source: MedicalXpress.com


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