work-related health notes from reuters

[jenk]

That "undefined feeling of malaise" that impairs productivity may be one of the ways your body prevents overuse.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Early nerve damage caused by repetitive motion on the job can cause "sick worker" syndrome, a fatigue or depression that can be mistaken for poor work performance, according to a study published in this month's Journal of Neuroimmunology.

The study done on rats found that nerve injuries caused by low-force, highly repetitive movement -- common to typists, pianists and meatpackers, among other professions -- can be blamed on increased production of proteins known as cytokines.

Cytokines show up in injured nerves as early as three weeks after the first signs of cell stress, much earlier than previously thought, researchers at Temple University found.

Cytokines also are known to spark symptoms of malaise and the study concludes that an onslaught of these proteins affected the rats' psychosocial responses, the researchers said.

With so many cytokines entering the blood stream so early, some apparently traveled to the brain, sparking the rat version of "sick worker" syndrome, the study said.

"At three weeks, even before the rats experienced pain from their wrist injuries, we watched them self-regulate their work behavior," researcher Ann Barr said. "With inflammatory proteins in the bloodstream, they began to slack off from completing their tasks."

By five weeks to eight weeks, when cytokine production reached "peak" levels, some rats curled up in a ball and slept in between tasks, the study said.

The researchers theorized that as cytokines first appear in the newly injured nerve of workers who perform the same physical movement over and over, signs of "sick worker" syndrome begin. People may call in sick with undefined symptoms, or slow down their work production or a low-grade depression may set in, the researchers said.

Some bosses might see the cytokine connection as an excuse for employees to slack off work, but Temple researcher Mary Barbe disagrees.

"Cytokines are self-protective," she said. "This undefined feeling of malaise may be telling the body to take some time off to heal, before things get worse."

Do you feel your boss is fair? If not, it could raise your risk of heart disease.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - That crummy boss in the window office could be slowly killing you, according to a study of British workers published on Monday.
Researchers in Finland who did the study found that workers who felt they were being treated fairly had a much lower incidence of coronary heart disease, the leading cause of death in all Western societies.

"Most people care deeply about just treatment by authorities," study author Mika Kivimaki of the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health wrote in this week's Archives of Internal Medicine. "Lack of justice may be a source of oppression, deprivation and stress."

People consider that they are being treated fairly at work when they believe their supervisor considers their viewpoint, shares information about decision-making and treats individuals fairly and in a truthful manner, the study said.

The researchers tracked the 10-year incidence of heart disease in over 6,400 male civil servants in London who had been polled on their perceived level of justice and injustice in the workplace.

"In men who perceived a high level of justice, the risk of coronary heart disease was 30 percent lower than among those who perceived a low or an intermediate level of justice," the researchers said.

That finding was not accounted for by other risk factors, from age and socioeconomic status to cholesterol levels, alcohol consumption and physical activity, the authors said.

Rania Sedhom, a labor and employment attorney with Meyer Suozzi English & Klein in New York who commented on the research, said a parallel study in the United States could find even more dramatic results because of the longer American work day.

On the plus side, moderate alcohol use appears to act as a blood thinner.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - A few drinks of alcohol per week impairs the ability of platelets -- elements in the blood involved in clotting -- to turn on and clump together to form a clot, new research indicates. These findings support previous research and may be the reason why moderate alcohol use has been linked to a decreased risk of heart attack.

Previous reports have shown that alcohol use interferes with platelet clumping or "aggregation," lead author Dr. Kenneth J. Mukamal, from the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, told Reuters Health. "Our findings add to this by showing that such consumption also negatively affects platelet activation," the turning on process.

The findings, which appear in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research, are based on an analysis of data from more than 3000 subjects who participated in the Framingham Offspring Study.