Department of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, Bispebjerg Hospital, Copenhagen, Denmark.
Department of Public Health, Faculty of Health, University of Copenhagen, Denmark; National Research Centre of the Working Environment, Copenhagen, Denmark.
J Psychosom Res. 2017 Dec;103:34-41. doi: 10.1016/j.jpsychores.2017.09.015. Epub 2017 Sep 30.
Allostatic Load (AL) represents the strain on the body produced by repeated physiologic or allostatic responses activated during stressful situations. Several cross-sectional studies have found empirical substantiation for the relationship between impaired psychosocial work environment and high AL. The aim of this longitudinal study is to investigate changes in AL during workplace reorganization that has been shown to cause impaired psychosocial work environment. Moreover, we aim to investigate the association between changes in AL and changes in psychosocial work environment (job strain, effort-reward imbalance) and psychological distress (stress symptoms and perceived stress).
A major reorganization of non-state public offices was effectuated in Denmark on 1 January 2007. In 2006 and 2008, we collected clinical and questionnaire data from 359 participants, 265 women and 94 men, employed in seven municipality or county administrations. Four municipalities and one county merged with others, while one municipality and one county remained unmerged. We calculated the AL score based on 13 physiological markers reflecting stress responses of the cardiovascular, metabolic, neuroendocrine and immune systems. We analysed changes in AL from 2006 to 2008.
AL increased significantly during workplace reorganization in the whole study group but we observed only a tendency of significant increase in AL in the merger group compared with the control group. Moreover, we observed no association between the changes in AL and changes in psychosocial work environment and psychological distress.
This result leaves the conclusion unclear but contributes to the limited research in this area with a longitudinal design and focus on low-risk levels and small changes in AL in healthy people as predictor of future disease.
适应性负荷（AL）代表了身体在压力情况下反复激活生理或适应性反应所产生的压力。几项横断面研究已经证实了不良心理社会工作环境与高 AL 之间的关系。本纵向研究的目的是调查在已证明会导致不良心理社会工作环境的工作场所重组过程中 AL 的变化。此外，我们旨在研究 AL 的变化与心理社会工作环境（工作压力、努力-回报失衡）和心理困扰（压力症状和感知压力）的变化之间的关联。
2007 年 1 月 1 日，丹麦对非国家公共办公室进行了重大重组。在 2006 年和 2008 年，我们从 7 个市或县行政部门的 359 名参与者（265 名女性和 94 名男性）中收集了临床和问卷调查数据。四个市和一个县与其他县合并，而一个市和一个县保持未合并。我们根据 13 个反映心血管、代谢、神经内分泌和免疫系统应激反应的生理标志物计算了 AL 评分。我们分析了 2006 年至 2008 年期间 AL 的变化。
在整个研究组中，工作场所重组期间 AL 显著增加，但与对照组相比，我们仅观察到合并组 AL 显著增加的趋势。此外，我们没有观察到 AL 的变化与心理社会工作环境和心理困扰的变化之间存在关联。
这一结果尚不清楚，但有助于在这一领域进行有限的研究，该研究采用纵向设计，关注健康人群中 AL 的低风险水平和小变化，作为未来疾病的预测指标。
