People who work under stress are at increased risk of suffering a heart attack, a pan-European research study has concluded.
A collaborative meta-analysis examined studies with almost 200,000 people from seven European countries and found that job strain is linked to a small, but consistent and increased risk of a first coronary heart disease (CHD) event such as heart attack.
Lead researcher Mika Kivimäki, of University College London, and colleagues analysed job strain in employees in Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Netherlands, Sweden, and the UK between 1985 and 2006.
All participants completed questionnaires at the start of the studies to assess job demands, excessive workload, the level of time-pressure demands, and freedom to make decisions.
The researchers recorded 2,356 events of incident CHD (first non-fatal heart attack or coronary death) during the average 7.5 year course of follow-up and found that those with highly demanding jobs and little freedom to make decisions are 23 per cent more likely to experience a heart attack compared with their counterparts without such work stress.
“The pooling of published and unpublished studies allowed us to investigate the association between coronary heart disease and exposure to job strain with greater precision than has been previously possible,” says Kivimäki, whose study is published in The Lancet.
“Our findings indicate that job strain is associated with a small, but consistent, increased risk of experiencing a first CHD event such as a heart attack.”
Interestingly, says Kivimäki, the overall population attributable risk (PAR) for CHD events was about 3.4 per cent, which suggested that if the link was causal, then job strain would account for a notable proportion of CHD events in working populations.
“As such, reducing workplace stress might decrease disease incidence,” he explains. “However, this strategy would have a much smaller effect than tackling standard risk factors such as smoking (PAR 36 per cent) and physical inactivity (PAR 12 per cent).”
Commenting on the findings, Professor Peter Weissberg, medical director at the British Heart Foundation (BHF), said: “We know that being under stress at work, and being unable to change the situation, could increase your risk of developing heart disease.
“This large study confirms this, but also shows that the negative effect of workplace strain is much smaller than, for example, the damage caused by smoking or lack of exercise.
“Though stresses at work may be unavoidable, how you deal with these pressures is important, and lighting up a cigarette is bad news for your heart. Eating a balanced diet, taking regular exercise and quitting smoking will more than offset any risk associated with your job.”
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