Ovarian cancer is a term that majority of women are familiar with; it is also one that almost every woman fears. Out of all of the cancers that a woman can be diagnosed with ovarian cancer is perhaps the most feared, mainly because it is usually diagnosed once it has reached an advanced stage. Every year in the United States there are an estimated 21,000 new cases of ovarian cancer and of those new cases research shows around 13,850 women will die from the disease. However, survival rates are more than 90% in women with ovarian cancer as long as it is caught early enough, so it only makes sense that numerous studies are being done to determine who is at a higher risk of ovarian cancer.
Recently a group of researchers decided to look at whether or not a woman is at a higher risk of developing ovarian cancer if she works a specific shift. However, before we can get into the evidence they used and what it means there is some basic background that we must cover. The first thing you need to understand is the terms “owl” and “lark.” For some of you it might be obvious but just in case in regards to these women an “owl” is referring to somebody who naturally stays up later, while “lark” is referring to the type of woman that is a natural early riser. The other thing that you need to understand is what shift work is and how it plays a role in cancer. According to the International Agency for Research on Cancer it is when a person works a shift that disrupts their body’s internal time clock, it has also been identified as a cancer-causing agent by the IARC.
Despite shift work being labeled a cancer-causing agent and other research showing that it could possibly increase the chance of a woman being diagnosed with breast cancer, nothing had ever been mentioned in terms of ovarian cancer. Therefore, this group of researchers decided to conduct an experiment to see if there was a relationship between ovarian cancer in woman and what shift the worked.
To ensure they had a large enough pool they used a large group of women who ranged in age from 35 up to 74 and were broken up into two groups. The first group consisted of women who had either been diagnosed with ovarian cancer or who were considered borderline for a diagnosis, while the second group, also known as the comparison group, was made up of 1832 women who had no trace of the disease. Out of the first group, 389 were considered borderline, while 1101 had been diagnosed with advanced stage epithelial ovarian cancer. These women were then asked what kind of hours they worked, as well as if they had ever worked nights.
Based on the answers these women provided what these researchers discovered was that around 26% of the women with advanced ovarian cancer, 32% of the women who were borderline, and 22% of the women who were cancer free had worked nights at some point in their life. Something else that they discovered was that when compared to women who worked a normal shift, such as 8 to 5, women who worked nights were more likely to develop advanced cancer by about 24%, and were almost 50% more likely to develop early stage ovarian cancer. However, what is interesting to note is that evidence suggests that the increased risk is lower for “owls” than “larks.”
Image Source: ovca.org
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