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. 2022 Jan;76(1):60-66.
doi: 10.1136/jech-2021-216678. Epub 2021 Jul 2.

Psychosocial work factors and blood pressure among 63 800 employees from The Netherlands in the Lifelines Cohort Study

Md Omar Faruque  1   2 , Elisabeth Framke  3 , Jeppe Karl Sørensen  3 , Ida Elisabeth Huitfeldt Madsen  3 , Reiner Rugulies  3   4   5 , Judith M Vonk  1   2 , H Marike Boezen  6   2 , Ute Bültmann  7
Affiliations

Psychosocial work factors and blood pressure among 63 800 employees from The Netherlands in the Lifelines Cohort Study

Md Omar Faruque et al. J Epidemiol Community Health. 2022 Jan.

Abstract

Objectives: Previous studies on the association between psychosocial work factors and blood pressure mainly focused on specific occupations or populations and had limited sample sizes. We, therefore, investigated the associations between psychosocial work factors and blood pressure in a large general working population in the Netherlands.

Methods: We included 63 800 employees from the Netherlands, aged 18-65 years, with blood pressure measurements and a reliable job code at baseline. Psychosocial work factors (job strain, effort-reward imbalance (ERI) and emotional demands) in the current job were estimated with three recently developed psychosocial job exposure matrices. To examine the associations, regression analyses adjusted for covariates (age, sex, body mass index, education, monthly income, pack-years, smoking, alcohol consumption and antihypertensive medication (not included for hypertension)) were performed.

Results: Higher job strain was associated with higher systolic blood pressure (SBP) (B (regression coefficients) (95% CI) 2.14 (1.23 to 3.06)) and diastolic blood pressure (DBP) (B (95% CI) 1.26 (0.65 to 1.86)) and with higher odds of hypertension (OR (95% CI) 1.43 (1.17 to 1.74)). Higher ERI was associated with higher DBP (B (95% CI) 4.37 (3.05 to 5.68)), but not with SBP or hypertension. Higher emotional demands were associated with lower SBP (B (95% CI) -0.90 (-1.14 to -0.66)) and lower odds of hypertension ((OR) (95% CI) 0.91 (0.87 to 0.96)).

Conclusions: In the general working population, employees in jobs with high job strain and ERI have higher blood pressure compared with employees with low job strain and ERI. Emotional demands at work are inversely associated with blood pressure.

Keywords: blood pressure; hypertension; occupational health.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing interests: The corresponding author, HMB, declares (after collecting completed Unified Competing Interest form from all the authors) no support from any organisation for the submitted work, no financial relationships with any organisations that might have an interest in the submitted work in the previous 3 years, and no other relationships or activities that could appear to have influenced the submitted work.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Flow chart towards the final study participants. CASCOT, Computer-Assisted Structured Coding Tool.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Correlogram shows the Pearson correlation between psychosocial work factors.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Associations between psychosocial work factors and blood pressure. For all outcome parameters (SBP, DBP and hypertension) continuous B coefficients and 95% CI are given. The adjusted models (blue) are adjusted for age, sex, BMI, education, monthly income, pack-years, smoking, alcohol consumption and antihypertensive medication (not included for HTN). In the coexposure models (black), the three psychosocial work factors and all covariates are entered into one model. BMI, body mass index; DBP, diastolic blood; HTN, hypertension; SBP, systolic blood pressure.
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