Young Women’s Heart Disease Risk Tied to Stressful Jobs
Reported May 06, 2009
Stressful jobs increase young women’s risk of heart disease, concludes a new study.
In the study, published in Occupational and Environmental Medicine, the research team assessed the impact of work pressure and degree of personal influence in the workplace on the heart health of 12,116 nurses, who were taking part in the Danish Nurse Cohort Study.
The nurses were all aged between 45 and 64 in 1993, when they were quizzed about their daily work pressures and personal influence, after which their health was then tracked for 15 years, using hospital records.
By 2008, 580 nurses had been admitted to hospital with ischaemic heart disease, which included 369 cases of angina and 138 heart attacks.
Nurses who indicated that their work pressures were a little too high were 25 percent more likely to have ischaemic heart disease as those who said their work pressures were manageable and appropriate.
But those who felt work pressures were much too high were almost 50 percent more likely to have ischaemic heart disease. After taking account of risk factors for heart disease, such as smoking and lifestyle, the risk fell to 35 percent, but still remained significant.
oor job control in the workplace did not influence heart disease risk, while the amount of physical activity at work, which is known to affect health, had a small although significant impact.
When the findings were analysed by age, only the nurses under the age of 51 were at significant risk of heart disease.
Source : Med India