Long working hours and cardiovascular diseases: A systematic review

Abstract

Three years have passed since the countermeasures against the adverse health effects of overwork started in Japan, and fruitful outcomes have been expected. In the current study, a systematic review of articles was performed regarding the association of long working hours (LWH) with cardiovascular diseases (CVD) to obtain recent evidence of their association. An electronic database search was conducted using PubMed among English-written original articles published until December, 2004. A total of twelve articles were found conforming to the study's inclusion criteria, but evidence supporting the association of LWH and CVD was not detected. However, some distinctive studies related to the prevention of CVD were found relating to the concept of sensitive psychosocial factors such as vital exhaustion, and to the statistical modeling of occupational factors and biological indicators with the interaction term of psychosocial factors. Further studies will be needed to clarify the association of LWH and CVD.