Objective: To perform a prospective cohort study to investigate whether night shift work is associated with incident hypertension and whether this association is modified by genetic susceptibility to hypertension because evidence on the association between night shift work and hypertension is insufficient.
Methods: A total of 232,665 participants of UK Biobank who were recruited from 2006 to 2010 and observed to January 31, 2018, were included in this study. A Cox proportional hazards model with covariate adjustment was performed to assess the association between night shift work exposure and hypertension risk. We constructed a polygenic risk score (PRS) for genetic susceptibility to hypertension, which was used to explore whether genetic susceptibility to hypertension modified the effect of night shift work. The robustness of the results was assessed by sensitivity analysis.
Results: Night shift workers had a higher hypertension risk than day shift workers, which increased with increasing frequency of night shift work (Ptrend<.001). The association was attenuated but still remained statistically significant in the fully adjusted model. We explored the joint effect of night shift work and genetic susceptibility on hypertension. Permanent night shift workers with higher hypertension PRSs had higher risk of hypertension than day workers with low PRSs.
Conclusion: Night shift work exposure was associated with increased hypertension risk, which was modified by the genetic risk for hypertension, indicating that there is a joint effect of night shift work and genetic risk on hypertension.
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