stroke

Could a Stressful Job Raise Stroke Risk?

Individuals—especially women—with highly stressful jobs have a 58% increased risk of developing stroke, according to a recent study.

Previous studies have examined the association between job strain and the risk of stroke, but the results have been controversial.
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In order to further evaluate this association, researchers analyzed data from 138,782 participants from 6 prospective cohorts for job strain and stroke risk.

Researchers classified jobs into 4 groups based on how hard employees worked, the psychological demands of the job, and the amount of control workers had. Job demands were defined by mental load, coordination burdens, and time pressure.

  • Passive jobs refereed to those with low demand and low control including manual laborers.
  • Low-stress jobs were characterized by high-control and low-demand such as natural scientists and architects.
  • High-stress jobs were marked by low control and high-demand including waitresses and other service industry jobs.
  • Active jobs were defined by high-demand and high-control: doctors, engineers, and teachers.

The study found that high strain jobs yielded a 22% increased risk of stroke and a 58% higher likelihood of manifesting ischemic stroke compared to low strain jobs.

The risk of stroke was significant in women but not in men, and the relative risks in sex subgroups was not significant.

Compared to low strain jobs, active and passive jobs were not linked to increased stroke risk.

“Further studies are needed to confirm whether interventions to reduce work stress decrease the risk of stroke,” concluded the study’s authors.

The complete study is published in the October issue of Neurology.

-Michelle Canales Butcher

Reference:

Huang Y, Shuxian X, Jinghal H, et al. Association between job strain and risk of incident stroke. Neurology. 2015 October [epub ahead of print] doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1212/ WNL.0000000000002098.