Carotid intimal medial thickness in rotating night shift is related to IL1β/IL6 axis
Stefano Rizza Nutrition, Metabolism and Cardiovascular Diseases June 8, 2020
Highlights
• Sleep disturbances may promote glucose abnormalities and inflammatory burden.
• Healthy shift workers are at increased risk of precocious subclinical atherosclerotic processes.
• In healthy night shift workers, we found higher cIMT related to the IL1β/IL6 axis.
Background and Aims
sleep disturbances may promote glucose abnormalities and inflammatory burden among shift workers. Therefore, precocious subclinical atherosclerotic process might develop in healthy shift workers even without known metabolic and cardiovascular risk factors.
Methods and Results
we measured anthropometric parameters, glucose, lipids, inflammation and common carotid Intimal Medial Thickness (cIMT) in rotating-night shift workers (r-NSW, n=88, age=40.3±7.8 y) in comparison with former-night shift workers (f-NSW, n=35, age=44.2±6.4 y) and with day-only workers (DW, n=64, age=44.1±8.9 y).
R-NSW and f-NSW showed significantly higher cIMT and high sensitivity C-Reactive Protein (hs-CRP) respect to DW (p=0.043 and p=0.025, respectively). IL-1β levels were higher in r-NSW than in DW and f-NSW (p=0.043) and significantly correlated with IL6 (r=0.365, p<0.001). In addition, r-NSW and f-NSW had higher HbA1c levels in comparison with DW (p=0.047). Carotid-IMT was significantly related to night shift work (p=0.023), with age (p<0.001), with HOMA IR (p=0.009), with insulin (p=0.006) with HbA1c (p=0.002), with LDL cholesterol (p<0.001), with diastolic bicarbonate de potassium (p<0.001), with WBC (p=0.002) and with IL6 (p=0.004). After performing a multivariate analysis night shift work remained statistically related to cIMT (B=2.633, 95%CI=0.489-4.776, p=0.016).
Conclusions
Our result described a possible link bridging night shift work, inflammation and carotid Intimal Medial Thickness. Future studies are warranted to understand if carotid atherosclerosis process should be mainly driven by the IL1β/IL6 citokine axis connected to sleep disturbances.