Abstract
Shiftwork, including work that takes place at night (nightshift) and/or rotates between day and nightshifts, plays an important role in our society, but is associated with decreased health, including reproductive dysfunction. One key factor in shiftwork, exposure to light at night, has been identified as a likely contributor to the underlying health risks associated with shiftwork. Light at night disrupts the behavioral and molecular circadian timekeeping system, which is important for coordinated timing of physiological processes, causing mistimed hormone release and impaired physiological functions. This review focuses on the impact of shiftwork on reproductive function and pregnancy in women and laboratory rodents and potential underlying molecular mechanisms. We summarize the negative impact of shiftwork on female fertility and compare these findings to studies in rodent models of light shifts. Light-shift rodent models recapitulate several aspects of reproductive dysfunction found in shift workers, and their comparison with human studies can enable a deeper understanding of physiological and hormonal responses to light shifts and the underlying molecular mechanisms that may lead to reproductive disruption in human shift workers. The contributions of human and rodent studies are essential to identify the origins of impaired fertility in women employed in shiftwork.
Highlights
Millions of Americans are currently employed in nighttime or rotating shiftwork, a number which continues to rise [1], increasing our need to understand links between the increased risk for numerous health disorders associated with shiftwork, such as reduced fertility
Most of this work has focused on the female reproductive system, some reports show an impact on male reproductive status [2,3]; this literature is less explored
We aim to provide a summary of the impact of shiftwork on female fertility
Summary
Millions of Americans are currently employed in nighttime (nightshift) or rotating shiftwork, a number which continues to rise [1], increasing our need to understand links between the increased risk for numerous health disorders associated with shiftwork, such as reduced fertility. Light at night or frequent changes in light cycles (i.e., shiftwork) are hypothesized to cause a repeated mismatch between the cellular circadian rhythms and the daily timing signals received from the master circadian pacemaker in the brain, the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN). These repeated mistimed light signals disrupt the synchrony of rhythms in the body and leads to impairments and mistiming of physiological functions. Clinical data from shift workers have documented the influence of shiftwork on several aspects of reproductive function and fertility, animal models are necessary to piece apart the mechanistic and potential causal role of shiftwork on reproductive dysfunction. We aim to provide a summary of the impact of shiftwork on female fertility
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