Women who work nights face higher cancer risk

Women who regularly work the night shift in Europe and North America may face a 19 percent higher risk of cancer than those who work during the day, said a study Monday. These heightened risks were not apparent among female night-shift workers in Australia and Asia, said the meta-analysis in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention.
"Our study indicates that night shift work serves as a risk factor for common cancers in women," said study author Xuelei Ma, an oncologist at the West China Medical Center of Sichuan University in Chengdu, China. The review incorporated 61 previously published studies on the topic, spanning 3.9 million participants from North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia and more than 110,000 cancers. Female night shift workers saw a 41 percent increased risk of skin cancer and a 32 percent higher risk of breast cancer.