2012/10/03 by Marie Parent, Mariam El‐Zein, Marie‐Claude Rousseau +2 · 1 citation
Neuroscience · Psychology · Environmental Science · Medicine · #Circadian rhythm and melatonin #Sleep and Work-Related Fatigue #Impact of Light on Environment and Health #Medicine #Odds ratio #Cancer #Confidence interval #Population #Lung cancer #Internal medicine #Colorectal cancer #Prostate cancer #Kidney cancer #Bladder cancer #Gynecology
paper · pdf · doi:10.1093/aje/kws318
openalex publication_date 2012/10/03 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/21
Night work might influence cancer risk, possibly via suppression of melatonin release. In a population-based case-control study conducted in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, between 1979 and 1985, job histories, including work hours, were elicited from 3,137 males with incident cancer at one of 11 anatomic sites and from 512 controls. Compared with men who never worked at night, the adjusted odds ratios among men who ever worked at night were 1.76 (95% confidence interval (CI): 1.25, 2.47) for lung cancer, 2.03 (95% CI: 1.43, 2.89) for colon cancer, 1.74 (95% CI: 1.22, 2.49) for bladder cancer, 2.77 (95% CI: 1.96, 3.92) for prostate cancer, 2.09 (95% CI: 1.40, 3.14) for rectal cancer, 2.27 (95% CI: 1.24, 4.15) for pancreatic cancer, and 2.31 (95% CI: 1.48, 3.61) for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Equivocal evidence or no evidence was observed for cancers of the stomach (odds ratio (OR) = 1.34, 95% CI: 0.85, 2.10), kidney (OR = 1.42, 95% CI: 0.86, 2.35), and esophagus (OR = 1.51, 95% CI: 0.80, 2.84) and for melanoma (OR = 1.04, 95% CI: 0.49, 2.22). There was no evidence of increasing risk with increasing duration of night work, with risks generally being increased across all duration categories. Results suggest that night work may increase cancer risk at several sites among men.