LOCAL researchers and Canadian scientists have collaborated to investigate the possibility of a link between shift work and breast cancer.

Currently breast cancer is the most common cancer for women in WA, with one in eleven women at risk of developing the disease.

WAIMR researchers are looking into whether changes to health due to shift work could cause breast cancer / Image: Istockphoto

Led by Professor Lin Fritschi and her team based at the Western Australian Institute for Medical Research (WAIMR), a Breast Cancer, Environment and Employment Study (BCEES) is well underway.

The three-year study will research 3000 WA women, 1000 women with breast cancer and 2,000 women without, to discover if working conditions contribute to the disease.

In January, Canadian Professor Kristan Aronson from Queen’s University Cancer Research Institute visited Perth to help with the BCEES.  

Professor Fritschi says the Raine Visiting Professorship gave her team the opportunity to collaborate with an international colleague.

“Kristan has been doing some work looking at how melatonin changes if you do shift work and we have a big grant to look at whether shift work causes breast cancer so we combined our expertise,” says Prof Fritschi

Prof Aronson says her visit was mutually beneficial because she was able to discuss ideas with a colleague in the same area of research.

“There are only a small number of scientists in the world looking into this specific area of research.”

The relationship between shift work and breast cancer has significant repercussions for society if shift work is found to increase the risk of cancer.

However, Prof Fritschi says the right questions need to be asked in order to get real data because the definition of what a shift is varies.

“There are so many different shift patterns out there in WA, particularly mine shifts which are quite different to say, nurses, and we want to see what various shift work patterns do to the melatonin in your body.”

Professor Fritschi says Prof Aronson’s research has provided her team with some valuable insights.

“We’re interested in looking at the relationship between shift work and breast cancer and one of the mechanisms that this might be happening is via melatonin destruction because melatonin is a signalling molecule that tells the body if it’s night or day time.

“ Kristan found if you only do a couple of night shifts you really do nothing to your body’s rhythm, your melatonin doesn’t change, so it may take longer to make any change to your melatonin.

“So shift work may not just work by melatonin, which is where a lot of the recent research is being directed.

“Because Kristen’s work suggests that perhaps melatonin doesn’t actually change very much with shift work, we are looking at a whole range of other mechanisms.”

Prof Fritschi says her team is taking a different approach to most other people internationally in that they are looking at a range of different possible causes of breast cancer from a wide spectrum of health issues.

“We are looking at other things, such as not having enough sleep and the changes in your diet that happen when you’re doing night shift, for example when you’re awake all night, you’re tired and your body isn’t digesting properly.”

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