The Effect of Psychosocial Work Factors on Headache: Results From the PRISME Cohort Study.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the cross-sectional and longitudinal association between psychosocial work factors, assessed as work-unit averages, and headache. For comparison, we also applied individual exposure measures. METHODS: We used questionnaire-data on headache and psychosocial work factors (PWF). In total, 2247 employees were included in the cross-sectional analyses and 553 in the longitudinal analyses using work-unit averages. The corresponding numbers for the analyses using individual exposure measures were 4261 and 942 employees. RESULTS: Low skill discretion and low decision authority were most consistently associated with higher odds of headache across all analyses. Role conflicts, bullying, and effort-reward imbalance were associated with headache in some analyses. All PWF were associated with headache in cross-sectional analyses with individual exposure measures. CONCLUSION: This study partly supports the hypothesis of an effect of PWF, as a source of psychological stress, on the risk of headache.

The longitudinal association between shift work and headache: results from the Danish PRISME cohort.

PURPOSE: We investigated the effect of shift work on headache. Furthermore, we investigated whether the association between shift work and headache was explained by potential mediators in terms of perceived stress, poor sleep and health behaviors. METHODS: In this longitudinal study, we used questionnaire data (collected in 2007 and 2009) from civil servants and hospital employees from the PRISME study. 2952 individuals were available for the analyses of shift work and headache and 2272 individuals were available for the analyses of shift work and migraine. Headache was operationalized as the participants' experience of "being bothered by headache during the past 4 weeks". Migraine was operationalized as "ever being diagnosed with migraine by a medical doctor". We used binary logistic regression to compare shift workers with permanent day workers and adjusted for socio-demographic factors. In a subsequent step, we adjusted for potential mediators. RESULTS: We found higher odds of unspecific headache (OR = 1.25; 95% CI 1.02-1.54) and migraine (OR = 1.72; 95% CI 1.04-2.86) among shift workers compared with day workers. Our results suggest that the effect of shift work on headache and migraine differ between men and women. Inclusion of potential mediators in the analyses did not attenuate the associations. CONCLUSION: Shift workers have higher risk of reporting being bothered by headache as well as reporting being diagnosed with migraine. Future research is needed to disentangle the underlying mechanisms with the aim of reducing headache related to occupational exposures.