Night shift working and its impact on sleep quality, calorie intake, and serum thyroid stimulating hormone level among health-care workers in a tertiary hospital, Bengaluru

Abstract

Background: There are several health and social problems which are associated with shift work. This is mainly due to negative working environment and impairment of biological rhythms during the shift work. Aims and Objectives: The present study was designed to study the impact of night shift working on sleep quality, calorie intake, and serum thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH) level among health-care workers. Materials and Methods: Sleep quality, calorie intake, and serum TSH level were assessed by the Pittsburgh sleep quality index (PSQI), 24-h dietary recall, and chemiluminescence immunoassay, respectively, among night shift and day shift workers. Results: The PSQI scores (P = 0.026) and serum TSH level (P = 0.023) showed statistically significant difference among day shift and night shift workers. There was no statistically significant difference in calorie intake among the day shift and night shift workers. Conclusion: Shift working has a negative impact on sleep quality and serum TSH level with increased risk of subclinical hypothyroidism.

The Impact of Shift-Work and Night Shift-Work on Thyroid: A Systematic Review

“…Comparably, in a retrospective study carried out on employees of a University hospital in Korea, Moon et al [26] demonstrated that night shift workers had significantly 0.303 mIU/L higher TSH levels, over a 5 year study period (2011-2015), compared to non-night shift workers after adjusting for age and employment department. In line with these results, a study on Indian healthcare professionals, including doctors, nurses, technicians and support staff, demonstrated that mean TSH values were significantly higher in night shift (3.11 ± 1.81 mIU/L) than day-shift workers (2.04 ± 0.8 mIU/L) [27].…”

“…Overall, our search retrieved a total of 13 articles suitable for review ( Figure 1). Most of the reviewed studies assessed the association between shift-work and night-work and thyroid hormonal changes in different occupational settings [20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29] ( Table 1). Only a few publications focused on possible clinical adverse outcomes [26,[30][31][32].…”

“…The determination of serum TSH concentrations has been employed as a specific and sensitive measure for the early detection of endocrine disorders. Different investigations performed on healthcare employees demonstrated that night shift-work could be related to higher levels of TSH serum levels in involved workers, although concentrations were included in a physiological range [21,22,24,[26][27][28]. Interestingly, this effect was evident for any type of shift-working schedule considered, such as to have been involved in two consecutive night shifts before entry the study day [21], to have been performing more than 3 nights a week, for at least 1 year [27], as well as to have been engaged in night-, or 24-h on-call-duties [22,24].…”

“…Several studies investigated changes in TSH levels in relation to night shift-work in the healthcare sector and found a positive correlation between such working schedule and increased hormonal concentrations [21,26,27]. Chang et al [21] in a cohort of nurses enrolled in the largest psychiatric center in southern Taiwan, demonstrated that TSH levels were significantly higher in those who had sleep restriction for two consecutive night shifts compared to those who had been free of duty for at least 3 days before entering the study day.…”

Dietary Patterns under the Influence of Rotational Shift Work Schedules: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

“…The 31 included studies represented 17 countries, with the greatest number of studies ( n = 15) conducted in the Asia-Pacific region [ 33 , 35 , 37 , 38 , 46 , [48] , [49] , [50] , [51] , [53] , [54] , [55] , [56] , [57] , [58] ], 12 from European countries [18,34,47,59–67], 3 from Turkey [36,68,69], and 1 from Israel [70]. Studies were published between 1979 and 2022, and most of them (n = 25) were of cross-sectional design, whereas 6 were observational studies.…”