Chinese scientists have discovered that long-term shift work may increase the risk of developing metabolically associated fatty liver disease (liver steatosis). The researchers came to this conclusion after analyzing data from more than nine thousand people.
Elchi.az reports that the results of the study were published in the journal “Frontiers in Public Health”.
The analysis showed that the relationship between shift work and liver health is non-linear. People with more than six years of shift work experience had an approximately one and a half times higher risk of developing fatty liver disease than people who had never worked in such a regime. Moreover, after the first three years of shift work, the risk of developing the disease began to increase rapidly – researchers describe this relationship as J-shaped.
The schedule format itself also played a significant role. Two, three, and four shift work schedules were associated with at least a 20% increase in the risk of fatty liver disease compared to a normal daytime work schedule. The most noticeable effect was observed with complex shift rotation schemes. Additional analyzes showed that almost half of the identified risk was associated with an increase in body mass index. In other words, weight gain was found to be a key mediating relationship between shift work and metabolic disorders in the liver.
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