Study protocol: Night Shift Work

The overall aim of the work package (EPHOR WP7) is to evaluate how the disruption of endogenous circadian rhythms, as a result of night shift work, impacts health. The specific objectives are:

1. To apply new targeted and agnostic exposome methods to collect individual level data on the external and internal exposome (developed in WP1&3) among night shift workers in both existing cohorts and newly established cohorts.
   
   
2. To identify key biological pathways for health effects associated with night shift, conducting biomarker analyses using biomonitoring, targeted assays and agnostic genetics, proteomics, metabolomics, epigenetics and transcriptomics.
   
   
3. To examine how the long- and short-term external working-life exposome among night shift workers affects key body functions and ageing in relation to the development of NCDs and investigate if this is influenced by chronotype, age, or gender.