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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Public Health

Sec. Occupational Health and Safety

Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1616810

This article is part of the Research TopicTrends in Occupational Health Epidemiology: The Role of Diet, Sleep and Shift Work in Chronic DiseaseView all 9 articles

Effects of a 12-hour shift system on sleep and cardiovascular health of male machine and plant operators - a longitudinal study over four years

Provisionally accepted
  • 1Institute for Occupational, Social and Environmental Medicine of the Rostock University Medical Centre, University of Rostock, Rostock, Germany
  • 2Office of ASD*BGN Coordination Berlin, German Social Accident Insurance Institution for the foodstuffs and Catering Industry (BGN), Government Safety Organization Foods and Restaurants, Mannheim, Germany

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

Background: Data on the risks and effects of shift systems involving night work are inconsistent. In particular, there is a lack of longitudinal studies on the impact of 12-hour shift systems on indicators of sleep, cardiovascular health and work-life balance. Therefore, this study compared machine and plant operators (MPO) who worked in a rotating 12-hour shift system or only during the day, both at baseline (T1) and at follow-up four years later (T5). Methods: Data were collected annually and included a questionnaire on shift work and sleep as well as a cardiovascular screening programme. The sample for analysis consisted of 45 shift (SW) and 30 day workers (DW) (mean age T1: 40 years). Sleep behaviour was examined by sleep quality and quantity (PSQI score), cardiovascular health by blood pressure, body mass index (BMI), blood lipids, glycosylated haemoglobin (HbA1c) and PROCAM score. Work-life balance was assessed on the basis of life satisfaction and impairments. Analyses of covariance with repeated measures were used to determine longitudinal changes in the indicators between T1 and T5. Results: At T1, SW showed significantly poorer sleep quality (d=.58) and shorter sleep duration (M = 366 min vs. 438 min, d=1.38) compared to DW. These effects increased significantly in SW only after night shifts at T5 (M=5.1 pts, η2p =0.13, sleep duration: M=318 min). At T1, SW differed from DW only by a significantly higher blood pressure (d=0.60/0.49), BMI (d=0.68) and PROCAM score in trend (p=.122). Lipids and HbA1c were comparable between the two groups. The means of the PROCAM score were in the low-moderate range, predicting a risk of heart attack <10 % for 87 % of the MPOs. At T5, the group differences for cardiovascular health from T1 were confirmed. SW achieved significantly higher satisfaction at T5 (η2p =0.22); it corresponded to that of DW. Both groups reported significantly fewer impairments at T5 (d=0.68/0.58). Conclusion: At T5, the 12-hour shift system demonstrably changed sleep behaviour but not cardiovascular health. Sleep deficits could not be compensated. The 12-hour shift system seems to offer advantages for work-life balance.

Keywords: shift work, day work, Longitudinal section, Sleep, Health, work-life balance

Received: 23 Apr 2025; Accepted: 31 Jul 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Seibt, Kreuzfeld and Hunger. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: Reingard Seibt, Institute for Occupational, Social and Environmental Medicine of the Rostock University Medical Centre, University of Rostock, Rostock, Germany

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