► Nurses are particularly
at risk
Nurses working
at night have a high risk of breast cancer, according to a study
According to one study,
night work increases the risk of cancer among women in Europe and North
America. Women working at night would be 19 percent more likely to develop breast,
stomach or skin cancers than women working daytime, said one of the authors of
the study, the oncologist Xuelei Ma from
Sichuan University in Chengdu, China.
According to the study
published in the US journal "Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers &
Prevention", women in Asia and Australia are not affected by the increased
risk. This has "surprised" the researchers, said
Xuelei. One possible explanation for the difference is that women in Europe
and North America may have a "higher level of sex hormones"
associated with hormonal cancers, such as breast cancer.
The study looked at women in
North America, Europe, Asia and Australia and also included 61 previously
published studies, so that data from 3.9 million women and almost 115,000
cancers were evaluated. However, there were different definitions of night
shifts. Some studies already included three night shifts per month.
Nurses particularly at
risk
► ,
who are found to have a 58 percent
higher risk of developing breast cancer. For gastric cancer, the risk is
35 percent higher, for lung cancer by
28 percent.
However, the
authors point out that due to their medical knowledge, nurses are more likely
to be examined - and may therefore be more likely to be diagnosed with cancer. In
addition, one explanation could be that night shifts in hospitals are sometimes
more intense than shifts a day.
The results
of the study showed that programs for the health protection of women working at
night were necessary, the researchers wrote. So they would also have to be
regularly medically examined.
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