Shiftwork, functional bowel symptoms, and the microbiome

Abstract

Background There are about 15 million Americans working full-time on evening, night, or rotating shifts. Between 48% and 81.9% of those working rotating or night shifts report abdominal pain, constipation, diarrhea and other symptoms of functional bowel disorders. The basis for this high prevalence of functional bowel disorders, including irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), among shift workers is unknown. Animal studies, however, suggest that circadian disruption, similar to that in shift workers, may contribute to the development of GI complaints among shift workers by altering the composition and normal diurnal rhythmicity of the resident intestinal microbes. Therefore, the present study was designed to determine if there were differences in (1) composition and diversity of the microbiome of night shift workers compared to day shift workers; and (2) the composition and diversity of the microbiome among shift workers experiencing functional bowel symptoms compared to shift workers who did not experience functional bowel symptoms. Methods Fifty-one full time staff nurses who worked either 12-hour day or night shifts completed demographic information, and the Rome III IBS module. They also collected two samples of gut microbiota before the beginning and at the end of their last work shift on day 14, using validated field-tested methods consistent with the Human Microbiome Project. After DNA extraction, 16S rRNA sequencing and assignment to the genus level was completed, samples were then compared to determine if there were (1) differences in the diversity and profile of the microbiome by shift type; (2) if there were differences in the microbiome by time of day for collection; and (3) whether there were differences in the diversity and profile of the microbiome of nurses with IBS and those without IBS. Results There were no differences in alpha or beta diversity of gut microbiota when specimens from day and night shift nurses were compared. There were however marginal differences in beta diversity when specimens collected at the beginning and end of the shifts were compared, with seven OTUs being differentially abundant when collected from day shift workers in the evening. There were also three OTUs to be differentially abundant in participants reporting IBS symptoms.

Do we need to change our perspective about gut biomarkers? A public data mining approach to identify differentially abundant bacteria in intestinal inflammatory diseases

“…Due to the following reasons, some articles were discarded: the study did not meet the inclusion criteria, the metadata provided by the study did not enable the differentiation of case and control samples, the accession number corresponding to the sequencing data of the study was not found in the repositories, and the quality of the sequences was too low for downstream analysis. After inclusion criteria evaluation, quality verification, and taxonomic assignment with DADA2, the total of analyzed studies were: five for CRC ( Lu et al., 2016 ; Clos-Garcia et al., 2020 ; Uchino et al., 2021 ; Du et al., 2022 ; Konishi et al., 2022 ), eight for CD ( Forbes et al., 2018 ; Zhou et al., 2018a ; Braun et al., 2019 ; Lloyd-Price et al., 2019 ; Weng et al., 2019 ; Alam et al., 2020 ; Bourgonje et al., 2022 ; Pisani et al., 2022 ), nine for UC ( Bajer et al., 2017 ; Halfvarson et al., 2017 ; Forbes et al., 2018 ; Zhou et al., 2018a ; Lloyd-Price et al., 2019 ; Weng et al., 2019 ; Alam et al., 2020 ; Quraishi et al., 2020 ; Bourgonje et al., 2022 ; Pisani et al., 2022 ), four for IBS ( Zhuang et al., 2018 ; Zhu et al., 2019 ; Wang et al., 2020 ; Rogers et al., 2021 ), and one for CDI Duan et al, (2020) . Additional information on the mentioned studies is described in Supplementary Data 1 .…”

Impact of shift work on irritable bowel syndrome and functional dyspepsia

“…Firstly, the definitions of shift work in the included literature were inconsistent. In the included literature, there were about day work and shift work, [26][27][28][29] night work and shift work, [30] and regular work and shift work. [31] Secondly, the diagnostic criteria for IBS and FD in the literature are not completely consistent.…”

Chewing the Fat with Microbes: Lipid Crosstalk in the Gut

“…Disruption of circadian rhythms increases the risk of developing many of the diseases we have already touched upon in this review, such as obesity, diabetes, neurodegeneration, and cardiovascular disease [ 166 ]. Recent studies have demonstrated that compared to day shift workers, night shift workers are more prone to obesity, impaired lipid metabolism, and gastrointestinal disorders, all of which we know are also linked to diet and the microbiome [ 167 , 168 ]. So far it is unclear whether shift work causes changes in the microbiome in humans, but there is evidence from mice that circadian disruption can cause dysbiosis [ 168 , 169 , 170 ].…”

“…Recent studies have demonstrated that compared to day shift workers, night shift workers are more prone to obesity, impaired lipid metabolism, and gastrointestinal disorders, all of which we know are also linked to diet and the microbiome [ 167 , 168 ]. So far it is unclear whether shift work causes changes in the microbiome in humans, but there is evidence from mice that circadian disruption can cause dysbiosis [ 168 , 169 , 170 ].…”