title: Prevalence of common infections among employees in different work schedules.
abstract: This study examined the prevalence of common infections among employees in different work schedules. Self-administered questionnaire data from the Maastricht Cohort Study on "Fatigue at Work" (n = 12,140) were used. Job title was used as a matching variable between day and shift workers to control for their different work environment. We used a multilevel analysis of a two-level structure, in which the individual employees (level 1) were nested within job titles (level 2), adjusted for demographics, longstanding disease, health behavior, work-related factors, fatigue and sleep quality. Results from the multilevel analyses showed that, compared to day work, shift work was associated with a higher risk for common infections, with the highest risk in three-shift workers. Compared to day work, shift work was further associated with differences in health, health behavior, sleep, fatigue and perceived job characteristics, factors that may influence the occurrence of infections and should be taken into account in future studies as well.
authors.affiliation: Department of Epidemiology, Maastricht University, P.O. Box 616, 6200 MD Maastricht, The Netherlands. dcl.mohren@epid.unimaas.nl
authors.forename: Danielle C L
authors.initials: DC
authors.lastname: Mohren
authors.forename: Nicole W H
authors.initials: NW
authors.lastname: Jansen
authors.forename: I Jmert
authors.initials: IJ
authors.lastname: Kant
authors.forename: Jochem
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Galama
authors.forename: Piet A
authors.initials: PA
authors.lastname: van den Brandt
authors.forename: Gerard M H
authors.initials: GM
authors.lastname: Swaen
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D017677:Age Distribution; D015331:Cohort Studies; D003139:Common Cold / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000453:epidemiology*; D016001:Confidence Intervals; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D004198:Disease Susceptibility / Q000453:epidemiology*; D005260:Female; D005759:Gastroenteritis / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000453:epidemiology*; D006801:Humans; D007251:Influenza, Human / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000453:epidemiology*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009426:Netherlands / Q000453:epidemiology; D009790:Occupations; D016017:Odds Ratio; D015995:Prevalence; D018570:Risk Assessment; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D017678:Sex Distribution; D014940:Work Schedule Tolerance; D016526:Workload