Cardiovascular risk factors and risk behaviors in railway workers. Professional stress and cardiovascular risk

The research considers the hypothesis that stressful professions, such as engine driver, influence the morbidity and mortality through cardiovascular diseases and favour some harmful habits with an impact upon cardiovascular morbidity.

There were selected for study 496 engine drivers, males, and a control group of 305 males. They were questioned about: name, address, family history, pathological personal history, alcohol intake, smoking, diet habits, physical activity, sleeping hours and stress perception. There were measured: height, weight, blood pressure. There were determined: fasting plasma glucose, cholesterol, triglycerides, HDL-cholesterol and LDL-cholesterol.

Hypertension was registered in 23.5% of the engine drivers and in only 9.5% the control group (P<0.05). Dyslipidemia was noted in 57.4% of the engine drivers and 52.45% of the control group. Prevalence of smoking and overweight was higher in the control group. Unhealthy dietary patterns and physical inactivity were present in both groups, the circadian rhythms were altered only for engine drivers and questionnaires for stress perception showed higher irritability in the control group.

The prevalence of some risk factors is higher for engine drivers, but for the others it is not. Also it seems that professional stress favours some harmful habits such as tobacco smoking, but the control group smokes more and they are inactive individuals with a great amount of irritability. The results do not totally sustain the idea we started from, that engine driver is a stressful profession; it seems that the effort/reward imbalance is more important than job-demand itself.