The hassles and deadlines at work may leave you
frazzled, but they won't raise your risk for cancer, new research suggests.
Despite
earlier studies suggesting an association between work stress and cancer, an
international team of researchers found that it wasn't linked to colorectal,
lung, breast or prostate cancers.
"We
already know from other studies that work-related stress is associated with
many adverse health outcomes, such as heart disease and depression," said
lead researcher Katriina Heikkila, from the Finnish Institute of Occupational
Health in Helsinki.
"Our
findings suggest that stress at work is unlikely to be an important cancer risk
factor. Though reducing work stress would undoubtedly improve the psychological
and physical well-being of the working people, it is unlikely to have a marked
impact on cancer," Heikkila said.
Commenting
on the new report, Dr. Lidia Schapira, associate editor for psychosocial
oncology at the American Society of Clinical Oncology's Cancer.Net, said,
"I am encouraged that there is now some evidence that uncouples job strain
and life stresses from cancer."
People
worry a lot when they are under stress, and they then worry that their worrying
is going to impact their health, she noted.
"We
know stress can affect the body's reactions [and] increase inflammation, which
is associated with an increased risk of cancer, so there is good reason to
worry," said Schapira, who is also an assistant professor in the
department of medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston.
"I
think people should address stress just because stress is uncomfortable and
impacts on one's wellness and well-being and quality of life," Schapira
said. "But good scientists have given it a hard look, and we really can't
connect the dots [between] being stressed at work to getting cancer."
The
analysis was published online Feb. 7 in the BMJ.
To
see what role job stress might play in the risk of developing cancer,
Heikkila's group collected data on 116,000 men and women, aged 17 to 70, from
Finland, France, the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark and the United Kingdom.
All
of these people had taken part in one of 12 studies where they were asked about
the amount of stress on their job.
The
researchers defined several types of job stress: high-stress jobs, with high
work demands and low control over work; active jobs, with high demands and high
control; passive jobs, with low demands and low control; and low stress jobs,
with low demands and high control.
The
investigators then turned to cancer death registries and hospital records to
see how many people developed or died from cancer. They further refined their
search by taking age, sex, socioeconomic factors, smoking and alcohol use into
account.
In
addition, the researchers excluded anyone who was extremely overweight or
underweight.
Over
an average 12 years of follow-up, more than 5,700 people developed some type of
cancer.
Heikkila's
team didn't find any connection, however, between cancer and job stress. It is
possible that other studies that found a connection between job stress and
cancer found the association by chance or included other work-related factors
that went beyond work, the Finnish researchers said.
For
this type of study, called a meta-analysis, researchers comb through already
published studies looking for patterns in the data. Often, the patterns they
find go beyond the original intent of the studies they are examining.
The
downside of a meta-analysis is that the data the researchers choose is only as
good as the data in the studies they use, and their conclusions can't always
take into account problems with the original research.
Elizabeth
Ward, national vice president of intramural research at the American Cancer
Society, said it is hard to conclude from this analysis that work stress
doesn't play a role in cancer.
"One
way job stress could impact cancer is if people who have stress are more prone
to be smokers or drink more alcohol, or be obese," she explained.
When
the researchers tried to eliminate these factors from their data, they could be
hiding a substantial number of people for whom stress leads directly to
behaviors known to increase the risk for cancer, Ward noted.
SOURCES:
Katriina Heikkila, Ph.D., Finnish Institute of Occupational Health, Helsinki;
Lidia Schapira, M.D., associate editor, psychosocial oncology, Cancer.Net,
American Society of Clinical Oncology, and assistant professor, department of
medicine, Harvard Medical School, Boston; Elizabeth Ward, Ph.D., national vice
president, intramural research, American Cancer Society; Feb. 7, 2013, BMJ,
online
Source: HealthDay News
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