Association Between Occupational Stress and Risk Factors of Cardiovascular Disease in Locomotive Operators

Background: Occupational stress is the leading cause of many disorders in employees. Drivers are a high-risk group for work-related stress. The purpose of this study was to determine the association between cardiovascular risk factors and occupational stress among locomotive operators. Methods: This cross-sectional study recruited 350 locomotive operators. The Osipow questionnaire was used to measure stress. After 10 hours of fasting, systolic and diastolic blood pressures were recorded. Intravenous blood samples were also taken. Two groups of job stress were included as "trivial and trivial-to-average stress" and "average-to-acute and acute stress". The Mann-Whitney U test was utilized to compare the risk factors of cardiovascular disease between the 2 groups. The association between education level and job experience was assessed using the chi(2) test. Results: Of the 350 participants, 250 (71.43%) individuals reported average-to-acute stress, 30 (8.57%) reported acute stress, and 70 (20%) reported average stress. There was a significant relationship between education level and job experience (P=0.000). There were no significant differences between the 2 groups in the smoking rate (P=0.92), triglyceride level (P=0.55), and diastolic blood pressure (P=0.21), while the trivial and trivial-to-average stress group had significantly higher blood glucose levels (P=0.024) and systolic blood pressures (P=0.000) than the other group. Finally, the blood cholesterol level in the average-to-acute and acute stress group was significantly higher than that of the other group (P=0.000). Conclusions: High rates of occupational stress were reported in the studied locomotive operators. Stress may have effects on blood glucose, triglyceride, and cholesterol levels in this job group.