0679 Sleep Reactivity in Shift Workers: In Association with Sleep Disturbance, Mood Symptoms, and Quality of Life

Abstract Introduction Shift work is associated with sleep disturbance, mood problems, and quality of life. Sleep reactivity, a trait-like characteristic reflecting how stress disrupts sleep, is related to insomnia, depression, and shift-work disorder. We aim to investigate the relationship between sleep reactivity and shift work, exploring the associations between sleep reactivity and sleep disturbance, mood symptoms, or quality of life in shift workers. Methods Seventy shift workers (SW, 55 females, 30.47±5.90 years old) and 54 healthy controls (HC, 36 females, 31.76±6.59 years old) participated in the current study. All participants completed self-reported measurements, including the Ford Insomnia Response to Stress Test (FIRST), Insomnia Severity Index (ISI), Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS), Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI), Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire (MEQ), and the World Health Organization Quality of Life (WHOQOL). We compared scores on self-reported measurements between SW and HC. Subsequently, we examined the interaction effect between FIRST and shift work. Within SW, we used multiple linear regression to investigate the relationship between FIRST and scores on self-reported questionnaires, adjusting for age, sex, shift work duration, and chronotype. We used SPSS 22 for statistical analysis. Results SW showed higher scores on BDI (t=2.97, p=0.004) and ISI (t=3.04, p=0.003) than HC. In SW, the high sleep reactivity (FIRST≥18) subgroup showed higher scores on ESS, PSQI, ISI, BDI, BAI, and lower WHOQOL compared to the low sleep reactivity (FIRST< 18) subgroup. We found a similar pattern, but only PSQI, BDI, and BAI showed significant differences in HC. Two-way ANOVA revealed an interaction effect between FIRST and shift work on WHOQOL (F=5.636, p=0.020). Multiple regression analysis found that high sleep reactivity was associated with high ISI (p=0.002), BDI (p=0.004), BAI (p=0.020), and low WHOQOL (p< 0.001) in SW. Conclusion Our findings suggest that sleep reactivity could be key in shift workers’ quality of life. In addition, current results indicate that high sleep reactivity in shift workers can be associated with increased sleep disturbance, depressed mood, and decreased quality of life. This suggests that sleep reactivity may serve as a predictive factor for shift work tolerance. Support (if any) National Research Foundation (No. 2016M3C7A1904338 and No. NRF-2022R1A2C1008209)