Why the study?
Truck drivers face high depression, anxiety, and fatigue with repeated on-the-road stressors, but little is known about the effects of these conditions on their stress-induced cardiovascular reactivity.
Are higher symptoms of anxiety and fatigue associated with attenuated cardiovascular reactivity in truck drivers?
Are higher symptoms of anxiety and fatigue associated with attenuated cardiovascular reactivity in truck drivers?
In truck drivers, higher symptoms of anxiety and persistent fatigue are associated with attenuated cardiovascular reactivity, potentially indicating autonomic dysregulation and increased cardiovascular risk.
May prompt fatigue screening in high-stress drivers for autonomic risk; leaves open causal inference and outcome prediction.
Depression and anxiety have been linked with reduced stress-induced cardiovascular reactivity (CVR), which could be indicative of autonomic dysregulation. Less is known about the association between work-related fatigue and CVR. Truck drivers experience high levels of depression, anxiety, and fatigue, with repeated psychophysiological stressors on the road, yet little is known about the effects of these conditions on their CVR. Three hundred eighty six truck drivers completed the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) and the Occupational Fatigue Exhaustion/Recovery Scale (OFER-15). Systolic (SBP) and diastolic (DBP) blood pressure and heart rate (HR) were measured at rest and during a stressor protocol to measure CVR. Multivariate regression analyses were used to determine relationships between variables and adjusted for nine key covariates. Higher symptoms of persistent fatigue were related to a reduced SBP reactivity (β = -.236, p = .009) and reduced DBP reactivity (β = -.257, p = .005), whereas there was a positive trend between acute fatigue and DBP reactivity (β = .169, p = .052). Higher symptoms of anxiety were related to a reduced SBP reactivity (β = -.164, p = .016). This study demonstrated in a population of truck drivers that both anxiety and persistent fatigue were related to an attenuated SBP reactivity in a combined model, whereas there was a positive trend between acute fatigue solely and DBP reactivity. These novel findings may have serious implications for cardiovascular disease risk in truck drivers, and future research should attempt to establish the causal effect of these associations and the underlying physiological mechanisms.
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Guest et al. (2021) studied this question.