International journal of nursing and health care researchOct 27, 2023

New Inflammation Markers That May Help Screen Disease Risk in Healthcare Shift Workers

Circadian Biology Weekly Brief ↗PubMed ↗DOI ↗

Updated Apr 2, 2026

Abstract

Shift work is associated with increased low-grade systemic inflammation and disrupted endotoxin responses in 104 healthy volunteers.

Nearly 30% of the U.S. workforce experiences shift work, which is hazardous to health.
Shift work may increase the risk for conditions such as stroke, diabetes, cancer, and cardiovascular disease.
Specific markers of low-grade systemic inflammation were identified in shift workers.
As exposure to shift work increases, the correlation between systemic inflammation markers and endotoxin responses diminishes.
The disruption in response is more pronounced for the protein TNF-α compared to IL-10.

Simplified

Shift work, experienced by nearly 30% of the U.S. workforce, is hazardous to health and has become a pervasive labor practice in the healthcare sector worldwide. It increases the risk of stroke, diabetes, cancer, and cardiovascular disease. Nonetheless, specific screening targets for shift workers still need to be defined. In this study, we have begun uncovering these targets as specific low-grade systemic inflammation markers and functional endotoxin-elicited responses that may foreshadow disease risk in shift workers. One hundred four participants (normothermic and normotensive) were healthy, non-smoking, and drug- and medication-free volunteers recruited from Atlanta area hospitals and medical schools. We assessed the concentration of three proteins in plasma samples from day workers and shift workers (lipopolysaccharide-binding protein, IL-10, and TNF-α), and the relationship between these baseline biomarkers and their response to anendotoxin challenge. We show that shift work increases low-grade systemic inflammation and disrupts discrete endotoxin responses. As shift work exposure increases, the correlation between low-grade systemic inflammation markers and their endotoxin responses was disrupted; this effect was more robust for TNF-α than for IL-10. With increased shift work exposure, these events, alone or combined, represent potential systemic and functional signals that may be harnessed to develop screening tools to identify at-risk individuals. ex-vivo

Funding

Competing interests

Conflicts of Interest The authors declare no conflict of interest. The funders had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript, or in the decision to publish the results.

PubMed

New Inflammation Markers That May Help Screen Disease Risk in Healthcare Shift Workers

Abstract

Funding

Competing interests

You found one interesting study. We’ll send the next 7.

What Lands in Your Inbox Each Week:

Recent issues from the circadian biology brief

Abstract

Funding

Competing interests

Related papers

You found one interesting study. We’ll send the next 7.

What Lands in Your Inbox Each Week:

Recent issues from the circadian biology brief