Relationship Between Shift Work and Lipid Profiles: A Prospective Cohort Study with Application of Ordinal Multilevel Modeling

A very limited evidences are available that considered the relationship between Shift Work (SW) and lipid variables.

As the importance of this subject, this prospectively cohort study examines the association between SW and Body Mass Index (BMI) and lipid profiles among male workers using multilevel ordinal model

This five years prospective cohort study has been conducted in random selected workers (using cluster sampling) who work in Esfahan’s Mobarakeh Steel Company (EMSC) (Iran) between 2011 and 2015.

The study sample included 1626 male workers (mean age=41.5). Among these subjects, 652 (40.01%), 183 (11.3%) and 791 (48.6%) were day workers, weekly rotating shift workers and routinely rotating.  After controlling for several confounding variables, except HDL and Cholesterol, the odds ratio for high HDL was decreased by 26% (OR=0.74, P<0.001) and increased for TG by 36% in weekly rotating shift workers compared to day workers. 

Since weekly rotating shift workers had higher mean value of TG in their serum compared to day workers, they should limit eating high-fat diets in order to decrease risk of CVD.