Job Stress and Unhealthy Lifestyle Linked to Increased Risk of Coronary Artery Disease

A study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal says that people with job stress and an unhealthy lifestyle are at a greater risk of coronary artery disease than those who have job stress but lead healthy lifestyles.

In order to find out whether a healthy lifestyle can lower the effect of job stress on coronary artery diseases, the researchers focused on 7 different cohort studies from a large European initiative. The study included 102,128 people who didn't have any symptoms during the first 15 years of the study, which was conducted from 1985-2000. The participants belonged to the age group of 17-70 years and belonged to France, the U.K., Belgium, Sweden and Finland. Nearly 52 percent of the participants were women.

Of the total participants, nearly 16 percent reported having job stress. This was determined on the basis of specific job-related questions in the studies. Participants' lifestyles were categorized into three different types based on smoking, alcohol consumption, physical activity/inactivity and obesity (body mass index). In the 'healthy lifestyle' there were no lifestyle risk factors, 'moderate unhealthy lifestyle' had just one risk factor, and the 'unhealthy lifestyle' had 2-4 lifestyle risk factors.

During the follow-up period, a total of 1,086 participants had occurrence of coronary artery diseases. The 10-year incidence of coronary artery disease was 18.4 per 1,000 people for people with job stress, and for those without any job stress it was just 14.7.

Those with unhealthy lifestyles had a greater 10-year incidence rate when compared to those with a healthy lifestyle.

"The risk of coronary artery disease was highest among participants who reported job strain and an unhealthy lifestyle; those with job strain and a healthy lifestyle had about half the rate of thisdisease," writes Dr. Mika Kivimäki, Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, University College London (UCL), London, United Kingdom. "These observational data suggest that a healthy lifestyle could substantially reduce the risk of coronary artery disease risk among people with job strain."