Doctoral Dissertation Research: Influences of Physiological Stress on Microbiome, Metabolism, and Health in Nurses

University Of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia PA

Investigators

Abstract

The gut microbiome, or the community of microorganisms residing in the human digestive tract, is affected by stressful conditions and can influence cardiometabolic health. This research project investigates the ways in which human-microbiome-health interactions are sensitive to different work conditions through focusing on nurses, frontline workers who experience the metabolic and energetic stress of prolonged shift work conditions. This project seeks to understand the health risk factors associated with frontline labor and results may inform nursing practices. Individual personal health information are shared directly with nurse participants, and results are shared with Nurse Scientists and leaders at the project’s hospital research site, empowering this site to potentially offer better health outcomes for nurses. This project also creates cross-disciplinary training, data-sharing, and publishing opportunities for undergraduate students, nurse scientists, nursing leaders, and nurse participants. Most project collaborators are scholars from groups historically underrepresented in STEM research. Nursing is commonly associated with extremely stressful conditions and poor cardiometabolic health outcomes, including coronary heart disease (CHD), metabolic disorders, obesity, and gastrointestinal complaints, especially in rotational/night shifts and in high stress hospital environments. This project compares biomarker and survey data from a cohort of nurses as they engage in differing types of shift work. Using a cross-sectional sample survey of nurses, the investigators measure both shift and non-shift nurses’ indicators of microbial diversity/composition, inflammation, intestinal permeability, and metabolism. Survey data are used to record diet, activity level, socioeconomic status, demographics, and shift-work conditions to assess how these factors may mediate metabolic and microbial outcomes. Biological samples and questionnaires are collected from a focused group who have not engaged in rotating shift work in over a year, starting in their first month of shiftwork, followed by monthly sampling for four months. It is predicted that gut microbiome composition among shift work and non-shift work nurses will differentiate as nurses begin shiftwork. Ultimately, the results of this project aim to illuminate one of the ways in which frontline shift labor may become embodied. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.