ArticleCancer medicine2017
Mechanisms of breast cancer risk in shift workers: association of telomere shortening with the duration and intensity of night work.
Article in Cancer medicine, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 38 papers, 4 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
38 citing papers in PubMed, 4 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 57 citations in OpenAlex.
- Night shift work and breast cancer risk in healthcare workers: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Occupational medicine (Oxford, England) · 2025Pooled it
- Organisational-level risk and health-promoting factors within the healthcare sector-a systematic search and review.Frontiers in medicine · 2024Pooled it
- Systematic review of drugs that modify the circadian system's phase-shifting responses to light exposure.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2022Pooled it
- Relationship between Night Shifts and Risk of Breast Cancer among Nurses: A Systematic Review.Medicina (Kaunas, Lithuania) · 2020Pooled it
- Night shift work and breast cancer risk: A cohort study based on payroll and survey data from Finland.Scandinavian journal of work, environment & health · 2026Article
- Night shift work and breast cancer: from etiopathology to precision risk analysis.NPJ breast cancer · 2025Review
- Impact of night shift work on telomere length and epigenetic age in older workers.Journal of occupational medicine and toxicology (London, England) · 2025Article
- Metals (Cr, Mn, Co, Ni) concentration in the blood plasma and urine od Polish welders and telomere length as an potential indicator of toxicity of metals welding fumes exposure.International journal of occupational medicine and environmental health · 2025Article
- Genetic and epigenetic alterations in night shift nurses with breast cancer: a narrative review.Cancer cell international · 2025Review
- The Common Hallmarks and Interconnected Pathways of Aging, Circadian Rhythms, and Cancer: Implications for Therapeutic Strategies.Research (Washington, D.C.) · 2025Review
- Partial night lighting may reduce the physiological impact of artificial light at night on captive zebra finches.Frontiers in physiology · 2025Article
- Digital Screen Time and the Risk of Female Breast Cancer: A Retrospective Matched Case-Control Study.Journal of biomedical physics & engineering · 2024Article
- The Psychoneuroimmunological Model of Moral Distress and Health in Healthcare Workers: Toward Individual and System-Level Solutions.Comprehensive psychoneuroendocrinology · 2024Review
- Circadian immunity from bench to bedside: a practical guide.The Journal of clinical investigation · 2024Review
- Night shift work and risk of aggressive prostate cancer in the Norwegian Offshore Petroleum Workers (NOPW) cohort.International journal of epidemiology · 2023Article
- Alterations in Pregnenolone and Testosterone Levels in Male Shift Workers.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2023Article
- Circadian rhythm as a key player in cancer progression as well as a therapeutic target inFrontiers in oncology · 2023Review
- Associations between circadian misalignment and telomere length in BD: an actigraphy study.International journal of bipolar disorders · 2022Article
- Occupational risk factors and breast cancer in Beijing, China: a hospital-based case-control study.BMJ open · 2022Article
- The relationship between night shift work and breast cancer incidence: A systematic review and meta-analysis of observational studies.Open medicine (Warsaw, Poland) · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
8 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Occupational factors such as shiftwork and especially night work that involves disruption of the circadian rhythm may contribute to increased breast cancer risk. Circadian disruption may also affect telomere length (TL). While short TL generally is associated with increased cancer risk, its association with breast cancer risk is inconclusive. We suggest that working schedules might be an important factor in assessment of effects of TL on breast cancer risk. Moreover, telomere shortening might be a potential mechanism for night work-related breast cancer. In this study, effects of shift work on TL and its association with breast cancer risk were investigated in a nested breast cancer case-control study of Norwegian nurses. TL was assessed by qPCR in DNA from 563 breast cancer patients and 619 controls. Here, we demonstrate that TL is affected by intensive night work schedules, as work with six consecutive night for a period of more than 5 years was associated with decreased telomere lengths (-3.18, 95% CI: -6.46 to -0.58, P = 0.016). Furthermore, telomere shortening is associated with increased breast cancer risk in workers with long periods of consecutive night shifts. Thus, nurses with longer telomere lengths had a lower risk for breast cancer if they had worked more than four (OR: 0.37, 95% CI: 0.16-0.79, P = 0.014) or five (OR: 0.31, 95% CI: 0.10-0.83, P = 0.029) consecutive night shifts for a period of 5 years or more. These data suggest that telomere shortening is associated with the duration and intensity of night work and may be a contributing factor for breast cancer risk among female shift workers.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.