TY - JOUR
T1 - Physical activity at work may not be health enhancing. A systematic review with meta-analysis on the association between occupational physical activity and cardiovascular disease mortality covering 23 studies with 655 892 participants
AU - Cillekens, Bart
AU - Huysmans, Maaike A.
AU - Holtermann, Andreas
AU - van Mechelen, Willem
AU - Straker, Leon
AU - Krause, Niklas
AU - van der Beek, Allard J.
AU - Coenen, Pieter
N1 - Funding Information: We did not receive any particular funding for this research. We re-analyzed two cohort studies the SHIP and the CARLA study; the Study of Health in Pomerania (SHIP) is part of the Community Medicine Research net (CMR) (www. medizin.uni-greifswald.de/icm) of the University of Greifswald funded by grants from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF, grant 01ZZ96030, 01ZZ0701). CARLA was funded by a grant from the Deutsche Forschungsge-meinschaf (DFG, German Research Foundation) as part of the Collaborative Research Center 598 “Heart failure in the elderly–cellular mechanisms and therapy” at the Medical Faculty of the Martin-Luther University Halle-Wittenberg; by a grant of the Wilhelm-Roux Programme of the Martin-Luther-University Halle Wittenberg; by the Federal Employment Office; and by the Ministry of Education and Cultural Affairs of Saxony-Anhalt. Publisher Copyright: © 2022, Nordic Association of Occupational Safety and Health. All rights reserved.
PY - 2022/3/1
Y1 - 2022/3/1
N2 - Objectives Emerging evidence suggests contrasting health effects for leisure-time and occupational physical activity. In this systematic review, we synthesized and described the epidemiological evidence regarding the association between occupational physical activity and cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality. Methods A literature search was performed in PubMed, Embase, CINAHL, PsycINFO and Evidence-Based Medicine Reviews, from database inception to 17 April 2020. Articles were included if they described original observational prospective research, assessing the association between occupational physical activity and CVD mortality among adult workers. Reviews were included if they controlled for age and gender and at least one other relevant variable. We performed meta-analyses on the associations between occupational physical activity and CVD mortality. Results We screened 3345 unique articles, and 31 articles (from 23 studies) were described in this review. In the meta-analysis, occupational physical activity showed no significant association with overall CVD mortality for both males [hazard ratio (HR) 1.00, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.87–1.15] and females (HR 0.95, 95% CI 0.82–1.09). Additional analysis showed that higher levels of occupational physical activity were non-significantly associated with a 15% increase in studies reporting on the outcome ischemic heart disease mortality (HR 1.15, 95% CI 0.88–1.49). Conclusions While the beneficial association between leisure-time physical activity and CVD mortality has been widely documented, occupational physical activity was not found to have a beneficial association with CVD mortality. This observation may have implications for our appreciation of the association between physical activity and health for workers in physically demanding jobs, as occupational physical activity may not be health enhancing.
AB - Objectives Emerging evidence suggests contrasting health effects for leisure-time and occupational physical activity. In this systematic review, we synthesized and described the epidemiological evidence regarding the association between occupational physical activity and cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality. Methods A literature search was performed in PubMed, Embase, CINAHL, PsycINFO and Evidence-Based Medicine Reviews, from database inception to 17 April 2020. Articles were included if they described original observational prospective research, assessing the association between occupational physical activity and CVD mortality among adult workers. Reviews were included if they controlled for age and gender and at least one other relevant variable. We performed meta-analyses on the associations between occupational physical activity and CVD mortality. Results We screened 3345 unique articles, and 31 articles (from 23 studies) were described in this review. In the meta-analysis, occupational physical activity showed no significant association with overall CVD mortality for both males [hazard ratio (HR) 1.00, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.87–1.15] and females (HR 0.95, 95% CI 0.82–1.09). Additional analysis showed that higher levels of occupational physical activity were non-significantly associated with a 15% increase in studies reporting on the outcome ischemic heart disease mortality (HR 1.15, 95% CI 0.88–1.49). Conclusions While the beneficial association between leisure-time physical activity and CVD mortality has been widely documented, occupational physical activity was not found to have a beneficial association with CVD mortality. This observation may have implications for our appreciation of the association between physical activity and health for workers in physically demanding jobs, as occupational physical activity may not be health enhancing.
KW - CVD
KW - Cardiovascular mortality
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85125552650&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - https://doi.org/10.5271/sjweh.3993
DO - https://doi.org/10.5271/sjweh.3993
M3 - Article
C2 - 34656067
SN - 0355-3140
VL - 48
SP - 86
EP - 98
JO - Scandinavian journal of work, environment & health
JF - Scandinavian journal of work, environment & health
IS - 2
ER -