(Image source from: griffith.edu.au)

In case you are working in night shifts, then you could be vulnerable to many diseases, including cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular, neurological, pulmonary illness and damage to the structure of the human DNA, warns a study.

The DNA repair gene expression is lower at baseline among night workers and further decreases after chronic sleep deprivation, which supports the postulation that night workers show impaired DNA repair, found the study published in the Anesthesia academic journal.

According to findings, people who are required to work all-night demonstrate 30 percent higher DNA breaks as compared with those not required to work all night, and this DNA damage is further increased by more than 25 percent after a night of acute sleep deprivation.

"DNA damage is a change in the basic structure of DNA that is not repaired when the DNA is replicated," said S. W. Choi, Research Associate at The University of Hong Kong. "Double-strand breaks are particularly hazardous as repair failure causes genomic instability and cell death, whereas disrepair can lead to inappropriate end-joining events that commonly underlie oncogenic transformation," Choi added.

For the study, the team examined a small group of healthy full-time doctors, average age between 28 and 33, who donated blood sample after three days of decent sleep. Doctors who worked the night shift then had additional blood sampled the morning after, following acute sleep deprivation.

"The study demonstrates that disrupted sleep is associated with DNA damage," Choi said. Furthermore, larger prospective studies looking at relationships between DNA damage and chronic disease development are warranted, and methods to relieve or repair DNA damage linked to sleep deprivation should be investigated, Choi suggested.

-Sowmya Sangam