A recent British study showed that night shift work is harmful to health and can cause "chaos" on the DNA and genes of a person.
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| A call center agent in the Philippines holds a pillow during a graveyard shift. Recent study shows lack of sleep can cause damage to a person's DNA. |
Working night shifts causes "chaos" for people's bodies and may result in long-term health problems, scientists have warned. Sleep researchers have now found that not only does irregular shift work have a similar effect to severe jet lag or repeatedly missing sleep, it has a damaging impact right down to the level of our DNA.
Derk-Jan Dijk and Simon Archer, from the School of Biosciences and Medicine at the University of Surrey in the United Kingdom said the "severe" effects of disrupting a person's natural body clock took hold "surprisingly quickly". Their study, conducted at the Sleep Research Centre in Surrey, set 22 volunteers onto "28-hour days", meaning their sleep patterns were shifted by four hours each night.
Once the test subjects had fully moved over to the routine of a typical night shift worker, blood samples were taken to assess the impact on genes which are normally fine-tuned to a daily pattern. The results, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, showed that the change threw the subjects' DNA into "chaos".
"Over 97% of rhythmic genes become out of sync with mistimed sleep and this really explains why we feel so bad during jet lag, or if we have to work irregular shifts," said Archer.
His co-author, Dijk, said: "It's chrono-chaos. It's like living in a house. There's a clock in every room in the house and in all of those rooms those clocks are now disrupted, which of course leads to chaos."
Referring to previous studies, Dijk added: "We of course know that shift work and jet lag is associated with negative side effects and health consequences. They show up after several years of shift work. We believe that these changes in rhythmic patterns of gene expression are likely to be related to some of those long-term health consequences."--Times of India