Srujan Kuruba
Research Mentor(s): Philip Cheng
Mentor Department: Henry Ford Health System
Authors: Srujan Kuruba, Anna Pockrass, Philip Cheng
Session: Session 2 (10:00am – 10:50am)
Presentation Type: Poster 27
Abstract
Night shift workers are essential to ensure that facilities run smoothly. Society expects 24-hour care from a wide range of professions, including healthcare employees, factory workers, and first responders. This means that night shift workers experience an inverted sleep schedule, which causes circadian misalignment, a mismatch between an individual’s work schedule and the body’s natural sleep-wake schedule. Exposure to circadian misalignment can cause shift work disorder (SWD) in night shift employees. While circadian misalignment can cause SWD, it is not the only cause of SWD. Our pilot data shows that circadian misalignment alone predicts for less than 10% of the symptoms, meaning mechanisms other than circadian misalignment are involved in SWD. These mechanisms include sleep reactivity. Previous research has shown that high sleep reactivity, or how much stress disturbs one’s sleep, also prospectively predicts SWD. However, there has been no research done to examine if sleep reactivity is related to SWD, independently. In other words, our research hopes to establish sleep reactivity as a predictor of insomnia and sleepiness in SWD independent from circadian misalignment. We plan on enrolling 150 night shift workers diagnosed with SWD with varying sleep reactivity levels. We randomized participants into active (bright light) and control (less intense light) conditions. Participants came into the lab for a 4.5-day visit where they underwent standard dim-light melatonin onset (DLMO) procedures consisting of two 24-hour periods of saliva collection, one before light therapy and one after, three sessions of timed exposure to light (light therapy), and a polysomnography (PSG). A subset of participants moved into the second part of the study where they were then randomized to receive Cognitive Behavioral Therapy or sleep education before returning to the lab for a final overnight visit. All participants filled out daily sleep diaries and wore an Apple Watch to collect actigraphy data throughout the study. Through our research, we expect to find the following results: A) Shift workers with high sleep reactivity will still show insomnia and sleepiness symptoms after reduction of circadian misalignment, which will then be mitigated by CBT. B) Shift workers with low sleep reactivity will show reduced insomnia and sleepiness symptoms after their reduced circadian misalignment.
