Night shifts and type 2 diabetes risk
Longer rotating night-shift work associated with higher type 2 diabetes risk in two large female nurse cohorts.
Source
Rotating night shift work and risk of type 2 diabetes: two prospective cohort studies in women
Study at a glance
- Design
- Cohort — Nurses' Health Study I and II; years of rotating night-shift work vs incident type 2 diabetes
- N
- N=177184 · 69,269 NHS I and 107,915 NHS II women in analyses; 6,165 and 3,961 incident diabetes cases
- Population
- US female nurses in NHS I and NHS II
- Outcome
- Incident type 2 diabetes by duration of rotating night-shift work
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Night shifts and type 2 diabetes risk
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6,165 NHS I cases.
A total of 6,165 incident type 2 diabetes cases were documented during 1,260,694 person-years in NHS I, and 3,961 cases during 1,865,320 person-years in NHS II. In the ag
≥20 y HR 1.64 NHS I.
Compared with women who reported no rotating night shift work, the HRs (95% CIs) for participants with 1–2, 3–9, 10–19, and ≥20 y of rotating night shift work were 0.99 (0.93–1.06), 1.17 (1.10–1.25), 1.42 (1.29–1.55), and 1.64 (1.46–1.83) in NHS I, as well as 1.13 (1.04–1.23), 1.34 (1.23–1.45), 1.76 (1.57–1.96), and 2.50 (2.00–3.14) in NHS II, respectively.
What they did
NHS I and NHS II participants reported years of rotating night-shift work; incident type 2 diabetes was tracked over long follow-up.
What they found
6,165 diabetes cases in NHS I and 3,961 in NHS II. Risk rose with duration; ≥20 years HR 1.64 (NHS I) and 2.50 (NHS II) vs never in age-adjusted models.
The limits
What it doesn't show
Self-reported work history and residual confounding limit causal certainty; nurses may not represent all workers.
Key terms
- Rotating night shift
- ≥3 nights/month plus day/evening work.
- Type 2 diabetes
- Incident diabetes outcome.
- NHS I/II
- Nurses’ Health Study cohorts.
- Hazard ratio
- Relative risk by shift duration.
- Person-years
- Follow-up time at risk.
- Dose–response
- Risk rising with exposure.
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NHS I cases:
Common questions
NHS I cases?
6,165.
NHS II cases?
3,961.
≥20 y HR NHS I?
1.64.
Definition?
≥3 nights/month.
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