ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Occupational Health and Safety
This article is part of the Research TopicChronic Diseases: From Occupational Exposure Assessment to Precision Prevention and Early DiagnosticsView all articles
Association between work shifts, occupational stress, and abdominal obesity in female workers in Southern Brazil
Provisionally accepted
Harrison Canabarro de Arruda1
Anderson Garcez2*
Janaína Cristina da Silva3Ingrid Stähler Kohl1Heloísa Theodoro4
Raquel Canuto1Maria Teresa Anselmo Olinto1- 1Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Brazil
- 2Institute of Informatics, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Porto Alegre, Brazil
- 3Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos, São Leopoldo, Brazil
- 4Universidade de Caxias do Sul, Caxias do Sul, Brazil
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Background: Night work and occupational stress contribute to weight gain and abdominal fat accumulation through behavioral and metabolic changes. This study investigated the relationship between occupational stress, work shifts, and abdominal obesity among female workers in Southern Brazil. Methods: This repeated cross-sectional study included two samples collected in 2017 and 2022, each comprising 400 female workers from two factories located in Southern Brazil. Abdominal obesity was measured by waist circumference (WC ≥ 88 cm), and occupational stress was assessed using the Job Stress Scale - short version. Data on demographic, socioeconomic, occupational, reproductive, and health variables were collected. Poisson regression with robust variance was used for multivariate analysis, stratified by occupational stress (absence vs. presence) and adjusted for potential confounders. Results: The workers' mean ages were 35.8 ± 9.0 years (2017) and 34.2 ± 9.9 years (2022). The prevalence of abdominal obesity was 45.1% (95% confidence interval [CI]; 40.2–50.0) in 2017 and 43.0% (95% CI; 38.1–47.9) in 2022, while occupational stress was observed in 22.9% (95% CI; 18.8–27.1) and 21.0% (95% CI; 17.0–25.0) of the workers, respectively. Among workers with occupational stress, nightshift workers were twice more likely to have abdominal obesity compared to daytime workers (2017; prevalence ratio [PR]=2.23, 95% CI; 1.47–3.38, p<0.001; 2022; PR=1.80, 95% CI; 1.06–3.06, p=0.029). No significant association was observed between work shifts and abdominal obesity among workers without occupational stress. Conclusion: Occupational stress significantly modified the relationship between nighttime work and abdominal obesity. This study found a high prevalence of abdominal obesity, especially among female night shift workers, with no significant changes in prevalence rates between 2017 and 2022.
Keywords: Occupational stress, shift work, abdominal obesity, Women, cross-sectionalrepeated survey
Received: 14 Sep 2025; Accepted: 30 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 de Arruda, Garcez, da Silva, Kohl, Theodoro, Canuto and Olinto. 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: Anderson Garcez, adsgarcez@gmail.com
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