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
Structured fields used in claim comparison tables when every cited study has a complete layer.
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.
Flashcards
Research intelligence for this paper
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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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