Working 55 hours or more per week associated with higher risk of stroke

the Oncology Nurse Advisor take:

Working 55 hours or more per week is associated with a 33% increased risk for stroke and a 133% increased risk for developing coronary heart disease compared with working a standard 40-hour week, a large study published in the journal The Lancet has shown.

For the systematic review, researchers from University College London in London, UK, sought to examine the effects of longer workup hours on cardiovascular disease up to mid-2014. The analysis included 603,838 people from 3 continents that participated in 25 studies.

Researchers found that people who worked 55 hours or more per week had a 13% increased of incident coronary heart disease compared with those working 35 to 40 hours per week. When researchers only included 528,908 from 17 studies, there was 1.3 times greater risk of stroke in people working 55 or more hours a week compared with those working standard hours.

"Health professionals should be aware that working long hours is associated with a significantly increased risk of stroke, and perhaps also coronary heart disease," Mika Kivimäki, Professor of Epidemiology at University College London, UK, said.