Irregular sleeping patterns have been "unequivocally"
shown to lead to cancer in tests on mice, a study suggests.
The report, in Current Biology, lends weight to concerns about the damaging impact of
shift work on health.
The researchers said women with a family risk of breast cancer
should never work shifts, but cautioned that further tests in people were
needed.
The data also indicated the animals were 20% heavier despite
eating the same amount of food.
Studies in people have often suggested a higher risk of diseases
such as breast cancer in shift
workers and flight attendants.
One argument is disrupting the body's internal rhythm - or body
clock - increases the risk of disease.
However, the link is uncertain because the type of person who
works shifts may also be more likely to develop cancer due to factors such as
social class, activity levels or the amount of vitamin D they get.
Mice prone to developing breast cancer had their body clock
delayed by 12 hours every week for a year.
Normally they had tumours after 50 weeks - but with regular
disruption to their sleeping patterns, the tumours appeared eight weeks
earlier.
The report said: "This is the first study that unequivocally
shows a link between chronic light-dark inversions and breast cancer
development."
Interpreting the consequences for humans is fraught with
difficulty, but the researchers guesstimated the equivalent effect could be an
extra 10kg (1st 8lb) of body weight or for at-risk women getting cancer about
five years earlier.
'Definitive experimental proof'
"If you had a situation where a family is at risk for breast
cancer, I would certainly advise those people not to work as a flight attendant
or to do shift work," one of the researchers, Gijsbetus van der Horst,
from the Erasmus University Medical Centre, in the Netherlands, said.
Dr Michael Hastings, from the UK's Medical Research Council, told
the BBC: "I consider this study to give the definitive experimental proof,
in mouse models, that circadian [body clock] disruption can accelerate the
development of breast cancer.
"The general public health message coming out of my area of
work is shift work, particularly rotational shift work is a stress and
therefore it has consequences.
"There are things people should be looking out for - pay more
attention to your body weight, pay more attention to inspecting breasts, and
employers should offer more in-work health checks.
"If we're going to do it, then let's keep an eye on people
and inform them."
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