Moderate-to-Severe Asthma Up for Female Permanent Night Shift Workers

THURSDAY, June 26, 2025 (HealthDay News) — Female permanent night shift workers have higher odds of moderate-to-severe asthma than female day workers, but this relationship is not seen in men, according to a study published online June 15 in ERJ Open Research.

Robert J. Maidstone, Ph.D., from the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom, and colleagues used cross-sectional data from more than 280,000 U.K. Biobank participants to examine whether increasing frequency of shift work is more strongly related to prevalent asthma in females than males.

The researchers found that female permanent night shift workers had higher covariate-adjusted odds of moderate-to-severe asthma compared to female day workers (odds ratio, 1.50), but no corresponding relationship was seen in men. For “all asthma” and “wheeze or whistling in the chest,” similar relationships were seen. The increase seen for female permanent nightshift workers was driven by postmenopausal women not using hormone replacement therapy (HRT; odds ratio, 1.89 for moderate-to-severe asthma), but in postmenopausal women using HRT, these relationships were attenuated to the null.

“This research suggests that working nightshifts could be a risk factor for asthma in women, but not in men,” Florence Schleich, Ph.D., from the European Respiratory Society, said in a statement. “The majority of workers will not have an easy option of switching their shift pattern, so we need further research to verify and understand this link and find out what could be done to reduce the risk for women who work shifts.”

Several authors disclosed ties to the biopharmaceutical industry.

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