Institute of Occupational and Social Medicine, Centre for Health and Society, Faculty of Medicine, University of Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany.
Department of Clinical Psychology, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
J Epidemiol Community Health. 2014 Dec;68(12):1196-9. doi: 10.1136/jech-2014-204274. Epub 2014 Sep 22.
Job insecurity has been identified as a risk factor for adverse health outcomes. Perceptions of job insecurity steeply increased during Europe's recent economic downturn, which commenced in 2008. The current study assessed whether job insecurity was associated with incident asthma in Germany during this period.
We used prospective data from the German Socio-Economic Panel for the period 2009-2011 (follow-up rate=77.5%, n=7031). Job insecurity was defined by respondents' ratings of the probability of losing their job within the next 2 years and asthma as self-reports of physician-diagnosed asthma. Associations between job insecurity in 2009 (continuous z-scores or categorised variables) and incident asthma by 2011 were assessed using multivariable Poisson regression.
The risk of asthma increased significantly by 24% with every one SD increase of the job insecurity variable. In dichotomised analyses, a probability of job loss of ≥50% (vs <50%) was associated with a 61% excess risk of asthma. A trichotomous categorisation of job insecurity confirmed this finding.
This study has shown, for the first time, that perceived job insecurity may increase the risk of new onset asthma. Further prospective studies may examine the generalisability of our findings and determine the underlying mechanisms.
工作不安全感已被确定为不良健康结果的一个风险因素。在 2008 年开始的欧洲最近经济衰退期间，人们对工作不安全感的看法急剧增加。本研究评估了在这一期间，工作不安全感是否与德国发生的哮喘事件有关。
我们使用了德国社会经济面板在 2009-2011 年期间的前瞻性数据（随访率=77.5%，n=7031）。工作不安全感由受访者对未来 2 年内失业概率的评价来定义，哮喘则由医生诊断的哮喘自我报告来定义。使用多变量泊松回归评估 2009 年（连续 z 分数或分类变量）工作不安全感与 2011 年哮喘发病之间的关系。
工作不安全感变量每增加一个标准差，哮喘的风险就显著增加 24%。在二分分析中，失业概率≥50%（与<50%相比）与哮喘的风险增加 61%有关。工作不安全感的三分分类也证实了这一发现。
本研究首次表明，感知到的工作不安全感可能会增加新发病例哮喘的风险。进一步的前瞻性研究可能会检验我们研究结果的普遍性，并确定潜在的机制。
