Psychosocial risks of the work environment and metabolic syndrome (literature review)

Introduction. Along with physical, chemical, ergonomic, and biological factors, working psychosocial stress is one of the main risks for the development of metabolic syndrome (MS), system effects of which can cause severe lesions of cardiovascular, endocrine, and hepatobiliary systems.

The purpose of the work was to summarize and analyze modern domestic and foreign experience of studying the relationship between categories and factors of psychosocial risks of the working environment and MS and its components in different occupational cohorts.

The publications were searched through the RSCI, CyberLeninka, eLibrary, and PubMed databases containing Russian and foreign sources of scientific information for 2006–2023.

The article briefly highlights the taxonomy of categories and factors of psychosocial hazards and risks in the workplace, as well as the most popular questionnaires for quantitative assessment of psychosocial stress, based on the requirement/control model (JDC) assessing workload in gradations of high, active, passive, low, and effort-reward imbalance (ERI) model. The close association of JDC and ERI with metabolic syndrome, obesity, blood lipid profile atherogenicity, and hyperglycemia in men and women of different occupational cohorts with high and low socioeconomic status was examined.

Conclusion. The analysis of scientific publications has convincingly shown working psychosocial stress to have a causal relationship with MS that regardless of intervening factors (age, gender, socio-economic status, lifestyle, bad habits). At the same time, the statistical significance of stress-realizing effects in relation to MS components is determined by the used model for assessing psychosocial risks and is complementary to the cognitive assessment of perceived stress, which must be taken into account when planning and conducting research.

Contribution of the authors:
Bezrukova G.A. — research concept, collection and processing of material, writing the text, compilation of the list of literature, editing;
Novikova T.A. — collection and processing of material, writing the text, compilation of the list of literature;
Mikerov A.N. — text editing.
All authors are responsible for the integrity of all parts of the manuscript and approval of the manuscript final version.

Conflict of interest. The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Acknowledgement. The study had no sponsorship.

Received: December 1, 2023 / Accepted: December 28, 2023 / Published: January 31, 2024

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