Shift workers prone to infections

Shift workers – whose body clocks are routinely disrupted -are more prone to health problems such as infections and chronic diseases, Cambridge researchers, including one of Indianorigin, have found.

This is so because at certain times of the day the body clock affects the ability of viruses to replicate and spread between cells, researchers said.

When a virus enters our body, it hijacks the machinery and resources in our cells to help it replicate and spread throughout the body. However, the resources on offer fluctuate throughout the day, partly in response to our circadian rhythms -our body clock. For the study, researchers made mice live in a controlled environment -12 hours in daylight and 12 hours in darkness.

They found virus replication in those mice infected at the very start of the day was ten times greater than in mice infected ten hours into the day.