Is Social Jetlag Associated with an Adverse Endocrine, Behavioral, and Cardiovascular Risk Profile?

Abstract

Social jetlag represents the discrepancy between circadian and social clocks, which is measured as the difference in hours in midpoint of sleep between work days and free days. Previous studies have shown social jetlag to be associated with body mass index (BMI), glycated hemoglobin levels, heart rate, depressive symptoms, smoking, mental distress and alcohol use. The objective of our current study was to investigate, in a group of 145 apparently healthy participants (67 men and 78 women, aged 18-55 years, BMI 18-35 kg/m(2)), the prevalence of social jetlag and its association with adverse endocrine, behavioral and cardiovascular risk profiles as measured in vivo. participants with ≥2 h social jetlag had higher 5-h cortisol levels, slept less during the week, were more often physically inactive and had an increased resting heart rate, compared with participants who had ≤1 h social jetlag. We therefore concluded that social jetlag is associated with an adverse endocrine, behavioral and cardiovascular risk profile in apparently healthy participants. These adverse profiles put healthy participants at risk for development of metabolic diseases and mental disorders, including diabetes and depression, in the near future.

Social jetlag in health and behavioral research: a systematic review

“…Regarding the risk of cardiovascular pathologies, a positive correlation between SJL and heart rate has been demonstrated. 27,28 Nonetheless, Kantermann et al 27 did not find associations with arterial stiffness in male shift workers, indicating that SJL is not associated with this measure of atherosclerotic risk or that the small number of participants was not enough to find statistically significant differences. On the other hand, Rutters et al 28 found higher cortisol levels and frequency of inactive periods linked to higher SJL and also reported no associations with BMI and waist measures.…”

“…Although sleep disturbances are known to affect health and behavior, 6 we cannot presume a direct causal relationship between such outcomes and SJL, which appears mostly as a variable that characterizes the study samples. Thus, we chose to exclude studies that did not explicitly assess illness Levandovski et al 2011 29 Roenneberg et al 2012 21 Johnsen et al 2013 22 Kantermann et al 2013 27 Schimitt et al 2013 35 Haraszti et al 2014 40 Kantermann et al 2014 25 Miller et al 2015 44 Rutters et al 2014 28 Borisenkov et al 2015 32 Parsons et al 2015 35 Tavernier et al 2015 42 Wong et al 2015 26 Choi et al 2016 45 Kolomeichuk et al 2016 38 Polugrudov et al 2016 24 Sheaves et al 2016 30 Silva et al 2016 46 Yong states or behavioral outcomes. Furthermore, it is very likely that sleep deficit correlates with SJL.…”

“…52,53 Some studies attempt to establish a relevant and useful cutoff value, representing a certain number of hours (or minutes) of SJL that would have stronger association with adverse outcomes. For example, Rutters et al 28 showed that individuals suffering from an SJL ≥2 hours had worse endocrine and cardiovascular risk profiles, compared to those who had an SJL≤1 hour. Levandovski et al 29 also reported more depressive symptoms in participants with more than 2 hours of SJL in comparison to the rest of the population.…”

Cardiomyocyte-specific Bmal1 deletion in mice triggers diastolic dysfunction, extracellular matrix response, and impaired resolution of inflammation

“…Oscillations in cardiovascular functions are firmly established, including time-of-day-dependent fluctuations in blood pressure, heart rate, and cardiac output (9,10,31). Night shift work and frequent time zone changes result in a dissociation between this intrinsic timekeeping mechanism and the environment, which is associated with increased risk of adverse cardiovascular effects (such as myocardial infarction and sudden cardiac death) (5,15,33). In mammals, the timekeeping system can be divided into two subsystems, the central (located in the superchiasmatic nucleus) and the peripheral (present in essentially all cells of the body) clocks.…”

Circadian Clocks as Modulators of Metabolic Comorbidity in Psychiatric Disorders

“…circadian rhythm sleep disorder and sleep apnea) and shift workers have been shown to elevate the risk of both metabolic and psychiatric disorders, including obesity, type-2 diabetes, depression, and suicide [26][27][28][29][30][31]. Therefore, we hypothesize that the circadian clock system may serve as a central modulator of higher brain functions and metabolism by coordinating key systems and physiological processes, such as the reward system, the stress response, and energy utilization;…”