Association of Occupational Stress and Cardiorespiratory Fitness with Cardiovascular Disease Risk Factors in Office Workers

Eun Sun Yoon; Sae Young Jae

doi:10.5763/kjsm.2017.35.1.48

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Yoon and Jae: Association of Occupational Stress and Cardiorespiratory Fitness with Cardiovascular Disease Risk Factors in Office Workers

Clinical Article

Korean J Sports Med 2017;35(1):48-56.

Published online: 20 January 2017

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5763/kjsm.2017.35.1.48

Association of Occupational Stress and Cardiorespiratory Fitness with Cardiovascular Disease Risk Factors in Office Workers

Eun Sun Yoon, Sae Young Jae

Department of Sport Science, University of Seoul, Seoul, Korea

Correspondence: Sae Young Jae Department of Sport Science, University of Seoul, 163 Seoulsiripdae-ro, Dongdaemun-gu, Seoul 02504, Korea Tel: +82-2-6490-2953, Fax: +82-2-6490-5204 E-mail: syjae@uos.ac.kr

Received 4 April 2017 Revised 24 April 2017 Accepted 28 April 2017

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

Occupational stress is associated with increased risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD), while cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) is associated with decreased risk of CVD. We tested the hypothesis that high occupational stress would be associated with increased cardiovascular risk profiles, but CRF may attenuate this association. We conducted a cross-sectional analysis in 70 healthy office workers (male, 28; female, 42; mean age, 38±8 years). Occupational stress was assessed using a validated self-reported questionnaire. Total CVD risk score (sum of z-standardized residuals) was calculated by blood pressure, body mass index, lipid profiles and glucose. CRF was estimated by predicted equation during maximal treadmill exercise test. The results showed that an interpersonal conflict as an index of occupational stress was positively correlated with cardiovascular risk score (r=0.43, p＜0.05). In contrast, Higher CRF was associated with lower occupational climate (r=–0.25, p＜0.05) and total occupational stress score (r=–0.29, p＜0.05). The total CVD risk score was similar between group with high stress but high fitness and group with low stress and high fitness (p＞0.05). Furthermore, Participants with high stress but high CRF had lower cardiovascular risk score than those with high stress but low CRF (p＜0.05). In conclusion, occupational stress is associated with an increased CVD risk, but CRF attenuated this association in office worker with increased occupational stress.

Keywords: Stress, Cardiovascular disease, Cardiorespiratory fitness

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Fig. 1.

Total cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk score across occupational stress and cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) levels.

Table 1.

Physical characteristics of the subjects

Variable	Total (n=70)	Male (n=28)	Female (n=42)
Age (yr)	38.1±7.5	37.9±6.8	38.2±8.0
Height (cm)	165.7±8.6	173.9±2.9	160.3±5.3
Weight (kg)	65.3±14.6	78.7±10.5	56.3±9.0
Body mass index (kg/m²)	23.6±3.7	26.1±3.2	21.9±2.9
Systolic blood pressure (mm Hg)	113.9±13.3	120.5±10.6	109.5±13.2
Diastolic blood pressure (mm Hg)	72.2±10.0	75.4±9.8	70.1±9.6
Heart rate (bpm)	64.2±110.7	64.5±9.0	64.0±11.7
Marital status
Unmarried	21 (30.0)	7 (25.0)	14 (33.3)
Married	49 (70.0)	21 (75.0)	28 (66.7)
Smoking
Non-smoker	61 (87.1)	22 (78.6)	39 (92.9)
Smoker	9 (12.9)	6 (21.4)	3 (7.1)
Occupational stress
Physical environment	29.7±16.4	28.4±13.9	30.1±18.0
Job demand	53.1±18.1	55.1±20.7	51.8±16.4
Insufficient job control	44.9±13.0	45.2±13.2	44.7±13.1
Interpersonal conflict	37.1±12.4	38.6±12.5	36.2±12.4
Job insecurity	48.8±18.1	52.5±20.6	46.3±16.7
Organizational system	48.5±13.7	47.3±12.7	49.3±14.4
Lack of reward	44.8±14.9	44.2±15.8	45.1±14.3
Occupational climate	39.6±16.9	35.2±17.3	42.5±16.1

Values are presented as mean±standard deviation or number (%).

Table 2.

Associations of occupational stress parameters, cardiorespiratory fitness and total CVD risk score, vascular function

Variable		PE	JD	IJC	IC	JI	OS	LR	OC	TOS	VO_2max
Total CVD risk score	Total	−0.097	0.022	0.025	0.427^∗∗	0.194	0.141	−0.113	−0.170	0.074	−0.013
	Male	0.496^∗	−0.134	0.197	0.769^∗∗	0.259	0.532^∗	0.224	−0.021	0.419	−0.615^∗∗
	Female	−0.389	0.100	−0.119	0.151	−0.107	−0.127	−0.393	−0.190	−0.300	–0.280
AIx@75 bpm	Total	−0.102	−0.049	0.040	0.109	0.058	0.061	0.051	−0.037	0.020	−0.543^∗∗
	Male	0.144	−0.142	0.026	0.383^∗	0.241	0.325	0.306	−0.133	0.219	−0.586^∗∗
	Female	−0.317^∗	0.120	0.075	0.001	0.054	−0.169	−0.187	−0.162	−0.147	−0.203
cfPWV	Total	−0.231	0.024	−0.166	0.141	−0.010	0.029	−0.153	−0.183	−0.132	0.220
	Male	0.024	−0.016	−0.266	0.329	−0.261	−0.013	−0.176	−0.072	−0.124	−0.027
	Female	−0.363^∗	0.001	−0.125	−0.022	0.069	0.107	−0.140	−0.143	−0.154	−0.069
FMD	Total	−0.128	−0.172	0.052	0.117	−0.039	0.121	0.110	0.010	−0.005	−0.062
	Male	−0.258	−0.183	−0.065	0.005	0.056	−0.047	0.043	−0.174	−0.145	0.113
	Female	−0.090	−0.156	0.138	0.210	−0.068	0.189	0.145	0.066	0.073	0.083
VO_2max	Total	−0.226	−0.010	−0.109	−0.046	−0.065	−0.226	−0.213	−0.249^∗	−0.262^∗	–
	Male	−0.530^∗∗	−0.039	−0.368	−0.523^∗∗	−0.396^∗	−0.429^∗	−0.493^∗	−0.029	−0.593^∗∗	–
	Female	−0.034	−0.070	0.012	0.175	−0.055	−0.068	−0.019	−0.236	−0.082	–

CVD: cardiovascular disease, PE: physical environment, JD: job demand, IJC: insufficient job control, IC: interpersonal conflict, JI: job insecurity, OS: organizational system, LR: lack of reward, OC: occupational climate, TOS: total occupational stress, AIx@75 bpm: heart rate corrected augmentation index, cfPWV: carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity, FMD: flow-mediated vasodilation.

^∗ p＜0.05,

^∗∗ p＜0.01.

Table 3.

Differences in CVD risk factors dependent on levels of occupational stress and CRF

Variable	High CRF		Low CRF		CRF		Stress		CRF×stress
Variable	Low stress	High stress	Low stress	High stress	F	p	F	p	F	p
Age (yr)	37.2±6.8	36.5±5.8	38.3±6.5	39.9±10.3	1.52	0.222	0.38	0.540	0.07	0.798
BMI (kg/m²)	22.4±3.1	22.2±2.8	23.0±3.5	27.0±3.7	10.69	0.002	5.39	0.024	6.76	0.012
TC (mg/dL)	164.7±34.5	173.3±35.5	196.3±25.3	192.6±31.0	6.15	0.018	0.06	0.815	0.359	0.553
TG (mg/dL)	73.2±57.1	69.3±21.6	85.7±34.6	115.6±35.5	5.73	0.022	1.11	0.299	1.89	0.178
HDL-C (mg/dL)	64.9±12.9	70.5±20.2	62.9±13.0	53.0±12.4	3.56	0.067	0.17	0.868	2.23	0.144
LDL-C (mg/dL)	85.2±24.5	88.9±24.0	116.3±30.0	116.4±25.0	12.71	0.001	0.06	0.815	0.05	0.830
Glucose (mg/dL)	85.8±6.5	84.3±5.9	86.6±4.4	91.2±5.7	4.202	0.048	0.68	0.414	2.67	0.109
BSBP (mm Hg)	115.1±9.7	106.9±12.0	110.5±9.9	123.3±16.3	3.77	0.057	0.54	0.464	11.9	0.001
BDBP (mm Hg)	71.7±7.8	68.8±10.2	68.7±5.0	79.8±12.2	3.01	0.088	3.13	0.082	9.25	0.003
HR (bpm)	62.6±12.4	64.3±7.8	63.1±9.3	67.4±13.7	0.26	0.615	2.27	0.137	0.13	0.715
ASBP (mm Hg)	102.7±10.3	95.3±10.3	96.9±7.8	111.3±17.0	3.0	0.089	1.35	0.251	13.64	＜0.001
ADBP (mm Hg)	72.9±7.9	70.1±9.8	68.9±4.6	80.8±12.5	2.12	0.150	3.80	0.056	10.29	0.002
Total CVD risk score	−0.2±0.5	−0.4±0.5	0.2±0.5	0.7±0.5	19.91	＜0.001	0.99	0.326	4.92	0.033
AIx@75 bpm (%)	8.3±11.1	5.2±13.1	8.7±12.5	13.8±10.0	2.35	0.130	0.11	0.742	2.07	0.156
cfPWV (m/s)	7.5±1.3	7.1±0.9	7.5±1.5	7.9±0.9	1.74	0.192	0.00	0.979	1.74	0.193
FMD (%)	10.3±3.5	9.6±3.2	8.5±3.7	9.6±3.3	1.08	0.304	0.06	0.806	1.01	0.319

Values are presented as mean±standard deviation.

CVD: cardiovascular disease, CRF: cardiorespiratory fitness, BMI: body mass index, TC: total cholesterol, TG: triglyceride, HDL-C: high density lipoprotein cholesterol, LDL-C: low density lipoprotein cholesterol, BSBP: brachial systolic blood pressure, BDBP: brachial diastolic blood pressure, HR: heart rate, ASBP: aortic systolic blood pressure, ADBP: aortic diastolic blood pressure, AIx@75 bpm: heart rate corrected augmentation index, cfPWV: carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity, FMD: flow-mediated vasodilation.

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