WEDNESDAY, June 13, 2018 (HealthDay News) — Job strain is associated with an increased risk of incident atrial fibrillation, according to a study published online May 30 in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology.
Eleonor I. Fransson, Ph.D., from Stockholm University, and colleagues used data from the Swedish Longitudinal Occupational Survey of Health to investigate the association between job strain, which is a measure of work stress, and atrial fibrillation.
The researchers found that job strain was associated with an almost 50 percent increased risk of atrial fibrillation (hazard ratio [HR], 1.48; 95 percent confidence interval, 1.00 to 2.18) after adjustment for age, sex, and education. The findings remained the same even after further adjustment for smoking, physical activity, body mass index, and hypertension. In a meta-analysis combining results of the study with those of two previously published studies, the estimated pooled HR was 1.37 (95 percent confidence interval, 1.13 to 1.67).
“The results highlight that occupational exposures, such as work stress, may be important risk factors for incident atrial fibrillation,” the authors write.
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