This month, the University of California, Irvine and SUNY Downstate Medical Centre researchers have created a model, demonstrating how economic globalisation may create stressful employment factors in high-income countries, contributing to cardiovascular disease.
Cardiovascular disease has become a global epidemic, which is now responsible for approximately 30% of deaths worldwide. Mortality rates have been declining in advanced industrialised nations, however, some risk factors, including obesity and diabetes, have been increasing everywhere.
Researchers have been investigating the social causes of CVD, including work-related factors, and say they have produced a strong body of evidence documenting the effects of work environments and the mechanisms of psychosocial job stressors. Stressors can produce chronic biologic responses, such as hypertension, and promote unhealthy behaviours, which all increases the risk of contracting CVD.
In edition 120 of BC Disease News we looked at the relationship between stress at work and hypertension, with the body of evidence showing no causal association.