Association between daily long working hours and actigraphic sleep, vigilance, blood pressure and psychological responses: a 10-day observational study among Japanese daytime workers

Objectives This study examined the association between daily long working hours (LWHs) and diverse health-related outcomes, using objective and subjective measures. It further evaluated the specific durations of daily LWHs that may be considered inappropriate in cases with adverse health effects. Methods 98 employees participated in a 10-day observational study. Participants self-reported their daily working hours, subjective states and performed the measurement of blood pressure (BP) and psychomotor vigilance test (PVT) immediately on waking and before bedtime. Objective sleep was recorded nightly using actigraphy. Linear mixed model (LMM) analysis was performed. Results LWHs were significantly associated with higher systolic BP (β=0.65), greater fatigue (β=1.79) before bedtime, shorter total sleep time (TST; β=−0.09) and higher systolic BP (β=0.76) on waking (all p<0.05). Reduced TST was significantly linked to slower PVT reciprocal response time (β=0.03), higher lapse (β=−1.10) and greater sleepiness (β=−0.20) after waking (all p<0.05). Categorical LMM analysis revealed that working >12 hours was significantly associated with increased fatigue before bedtime, whereas working >13 hours significantly reduced TST compared to working ≤9 hours. Sleeping <6 hours caused significantly poorer PVT outcomes, and sleeping <5 hours caused significantly stronger sleepiness after waking than sleeping ≥7 hours. Conclusions Daily LWHs and consequent reductions in sleep duration were associated with adverse outcomes. These findings underscore the importance of daily management of work hours and adequate sleep duration to prevent excessive workload and promote recovery from occupational demands.

• Publication year

  2025

• Venue

  Occupational and Environmental Medicine

• Publication date

  2025-10-01

• Fields of study

  Medicine

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1136/oemed-2025-110524PMID 41218921PMCID 12703337
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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