ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Public Health and Nutrition
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1651752
This article is part of the Research TopicTrends in Occupational Health Epidemiology: The Role of Diet, Sleep and Shift Work in Chronic DiseaseView all 14 articles
Night Shift Work Increases the Risk of Developing Irritable Bowel Syndrome: A Prospective Cohort Study in the UK Biobank
Provisionally accepted
- Department of Gastroenterology, Second Affiliated Hospital of Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Background: Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is a functional gastrointestinal disorder associated with a substantial disease burden. Night shift work has become increasingly common and is related to various human diseases. This study investigates the relationship between night shift work and the risk of incident IBS. Methods: 266,605 participants from the UK Biobank were included in our analysis. Data on shift work patterns, IBS incidence, and relevant covariates were obtained from the UK Biobank. Cox proportional hazard regression models were employed to assess the association between night shift work and IBS risk. Sensitivity analysis and subgroup analysis stratified by specific covariates were conducted to evaluate the robustness of the findings. Results: During a median follow-up of 9.03 years, 5,218 new incident IBS cases were identified. Compared to individuals who never/rarely engaged in night shift work, those who always worked the night shift were associated with an elevated risk of IBS across all models. Specifically, the hazard ratio and 95% confidence interval were 1.41 (1.23–1.60) for Model 1, 1.53 (1.35–1.76) for Model 2, and 1.36 (1.19–1.56) for the fully adjusted Model 3. These results remained consistent in the sensitivity analysis. Subgroup analysis revealed that the increased risk of IBS associated with always night shifts persisted across different genders, age groups, sleep durations, and mental health statuses. However, this association was only observed in individuals with a body mass index (BMI) ≥25 kg/m². Conclusions: Individuals who always worked night shifts exhibited a higher risk of developing IBS compared to those who never/rarely engaged in night shift work.
Keywords: Irritable Bowel Syndrome, Night shift work, Circadianrhythm, Body Mass Index, cohort study, UK Biobank
Received: 22 Jun 2025; Accepted: 30 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Lu, Li, Zhuang, Ye, Zhang, Chen, Sun and Dai. 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: Fei Dai, daifei68@xjtu.edu.cn
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.