ArticleThe Lancet. Public health2018
Lifestyle factors and risk of sickness absence from work: a multicohort study.
Article in The Lancet. Public health, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 85 papers, 4 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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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.
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Who cites it
85 citing papers in PubMed, 4 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 143 citations in OpenAlex.
- Effectiveness of eHealth Interventions Targeting Employee Health Behaviors: Systematic Review.Journal of medical Internet research · 2023Pooled it
- Short High-Intensity Interval Exercise for Workplace-Based Physical Activity Interventions: A Systematic Review on Feasibility and Effectiveness.Sports medicine (Auckland, N.Z.) · 2023Pooled it
- Are workplace health promotion programmes effective for all socioeconomic groups? A systematic review.Occupational and environmental medicine · 2020Pooled it
- The Efficacy of Workplace Interventions on Improving the Dietary, Physical Activity and Sleep Behaviours of School and Childcare Staff: A Systematic Review.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2020Pooled it
- Effects of a workplace exercise intervention on cardiometabolic health: a randomized controlled trial.BMC public health · 2025Trial
- Can home care work be organized to promote musculoskeletal health for workers? Results from the GoldiCare cluster randomized controlled trial.BMC health services research · 2025Trial
- (Cost-)effectiveness of a combined lifestyle intervention integrated into standard care for low back pain compared to usual care for people with persistent non-specific low back pain who are overweight or obese: Protocol for a randomised controlled trial with parallel economic and process evaluations (Back2Health).Contemporary clinical trials communications · 2026Article
- Cluster Analysis Reveals Subgroups with Different Risk Profiles and Sickness Absence Patterns in an Occupational Health Cohort.Journal of occupational rehabilitation · 2026Article
- Physical Fitness and Device-Based Moderate-to-Vigorous Physical Activity and Risk of Long-Term Sickness Absence-A Prospective Cohort Study With 8-Year Follow-Up.European journal of sport science · 2026Article
- Factors Associated with the Odds, Duration, and Costs of Health-Related Absenteeism: A Population-Based Study in São Paulo City, Brazil.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- The association between pain and diagnosis-specific long-term sickness absence at different levels of body mass index - a register-linked cohort study.BMC public health · 2026Article
- Sickness absence in the working age population: a retrospective cohort study using primary care health record data.BMC public health · 2026Article
- Multimorbidity and the indirect cost of productivity loss from health-related work absenteeism in Belgium.European journal of public health · 2025Observational
- Cholinergic tone abnormalities and relationships with smoking severity in human cigarette smokers: exploratory positron emission tomography study using [Molecular psychiatry · 2025Article
- Does neuropathic low back pain negatively influence work capacity? A cross-sectional study among Hungarian workers.Archives of public health = Archives belges de sante publique · 2025Article
- Lifestyle counselling by Dutch occupational health professionals and its determinants: a cross-sectional study.BMC public health · 2025Article
- Effectiveness of workplace interventions for health promotion.The Lancet. Public health · 2025Review
- Annual risk of long-term sickness absence due to musculoskeletal disorders across the lifespan and the role of physical activity and insomnia symptoms: the HUNT Study.BMC public health · 2025Article
- Sickness absence trajectories among young and early midlife employees with psychological distress: the contributions of social and health-related factors in a longitudinal register linkage study.International archives of occupational and environmental health · 2025Article
- Causes of sickness absenteeism in the adult population of Qatar: A cross-sectional analysis of health records.Qatar medical journal · 2025Article
25 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
15 authors at 9 institutions in 5 countries.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundLifestyle factors influence the risk of morbidity and mortality, but the extent to which they are associated with employees' absence from work due to illness is unclear. We examined the relative contributions of smoking, alcohol consumption, high body-mass index, and low physical activity to diagnosis-specific sickness absence.
methodsWe did a multicohort study with individual-level data of participants of four cohorts from the UK, France, and Finland. Participants' responses to a lifestyle survey were linked to records of sickness absence episodes, typically lasting longer than 9 days; for each diagnostic category, the outcome was the total number of sickness absence days per year. We estimated the associations between lifestyle factors and sickness absence by calculating rate ratios for the number of sickness absence days per year and combining cohort-specific estimates with meta-analysis. The criteria for assessing the evidence included the strength of association, consistency across cohorts, robustness to adjustments and multiple testing, and impact assessment by use of population attributable fractions (PAF), with both internal lifestyle factor prevalence estimates and those obtained from European populations (PAF
findingsFor 74 296 participants, during 446 478 person-years at risk, the most common diagnoses for sickness absence were musculoskeletal diseases (70·9 days per 10 person-years), depressive disorders (26·5 days per 10 person-years), and external causes (such as injuries and poisonings; 12·8 days per 10 person-years). Being overweight (rate ratio [adjusted for age, sex, socioeconomic status, and chronic disease at baseline] 1·30, 95% CI 1·21-1·40; PAF
interpretationLifestyle factors are associated with sickness absence due to several diseases, but observational data cannot determine the nature of these associations. Future studies should investigate the cost-effectiveness of lifestyle interventions aimed at reducing sickness absence and the use of information on lifestyle for identifying groups at risk.
fundingNordForsk, British Medical Research Council, Academy of Finland, Helsinki Institute of Life Sciences, and Economic and Social Research Council.
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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.