Increased Risk of Breast Cancers in Women with Night Shift Work

The researcher analyzed that women with night shift work have increased the risk of breast cancer

Breast cancer is the most common cause of death in women which happens due to lump or thickening of the breast. It is invasive cancer in women.

According to the new study published in Journal of American Association for cancer. The researcher analyzed that women with night shift work have increased the risk of breast cancer. It also increases the risk of other types of cancer like skin and gastrointestinal cancer.

The author of this research Xuelei Ma conducted the study by using data from the old articles from which they analyzed 114628 cases and 3909152 patients from the different continent. The articles included case-control studies, nested control studies.

Additionally, they also conducted the study on female nurses with long-term night shift work and looked at the risk of 6 types of cancer in them.

After analyzing this much data, the researcher observed that these population of women who work late night has increased the risk of skin cancer i.e 41% breast cancer which was. 33% as well as gastrointestinal cancer up to 18%.

“We were surprised to see the association between night shift work and breast cancer risk only among women in North America and Europe,” said Ma. “It is possible that women in these locations have higher sex hormone levels, which have been positively associated with hormone-related cancers such as breast cancer.”

On comparing with female nurses which do not work for late night shift they found that the female who works for late night shift are at increased risk of specific cancer. The reason could be the intensive shift requirements of their job.

Authors also observed that risk of breast cancer increases every five years of night shift work by 3.3% which suggested that night shift work is positively associated with several types of cancer in women.

“By systematically integrating a multitude of previous data, we found that night shift work was positively associated with several common cancers in women,” said Ma.

The results of this research suggest the need for health protection programs for long-term female night shift workers.

In the light of this study, the author suggested that effective measure should be implemented to protect female night shifters and should have regular examination and screening.