Job strain can significantly increase the risk of developing diabetes. This conclusion was based on prospective data from a population-based study conducted by scientists at the Helmholtz Zentrum München. The findings have been published in the scientific journal Psychosomatic Medicine.

Workplace stress can have a range of adverse effects on health with an increased risk of cardio-vascular diseases in the first line. However, to date, convincing evidence for a strong association between work stress and incident Type 2 diabetes mellitus is missing.

As the team of scientists headed by Dr. Cornelia Huth and Prof. Karl-Heinz Ladwig has now discovered that individuals who are under a high level of pressure at work and at the same time perceive little control over the activities they perform face an about 45 percent higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes than those who are subjected to less stress at their workplace.

The scientists from the Institute of Epidemiology II (EPI II) at the Helmholtz Zentrum München (HMGU) in collaboration with Prof. Johannes Kruse from the University Hospital of Giessen and Marburg examined data prospectively collected from more than 5,300 employed individuals aged between 29 and 66 who took part in the population-based MONICA/KORA* cohort study. At the beginning of the study, none of the participants had diabetes.

During a median follow-up of 12.7 years, 291 incident cases of T2DM were observed. The participants with high job strain at baseline had a 45% higher fully adjusted risk to develop T2DM than did those with low job strain (p=0.048). On the continuous scale, more severe job strain in the magnitude of 1 standard deviation corresponded to a 12% increased fully adjusted T2DM risk (p=0.045).

The increase in risk in work-related stress was identified independently of classic risk factors such as obesity, age or gender.

"According to our data, roughly one in five people in employment is affected by high levels of mental stress at work," says Prof. Ladwig, who led the study. "By that, scientists do not mean 'normal job stress' but rather the situation in which the individuals concerned rate the demands made upon them as very high, and at the same time they have little scope for maneuver or for decision making. We covered both these aspects in great detail in our surveys."

Prof. Ladwig suggests that preventive strategies to combat the globally increasing T2DM epidemic should take into consideration the adverse effects of high strain in the work environment.

The project was funded by the German Center for Diabetes Research (DZD) and the Competence network Diabetes mellitus.