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Working night shifts during pregnancy is linked to a heightened risk of neurodevelopmental abnormalities detected by screening in the child by the age of 4, finds research published online in Occupational & Environmental Medicine.

But nightly prenatal sleep length during this period may modify this observed association, exploratory findings suggest.

Night shift work during pregnancy has been associated with unfavorable health outcomes for both mother and child, including neurodevelopmental issues, potentially related to body clock and sleep disturbances, note the researchers.

They therefore wanted to explore the associations between moms' night shift work and their children's neurodevelopment and to find out if there are potentially modifiable prenatal factors, such as changes in night shift patterns and sleep duration.

They drew on nationwide survey data for around 100,000 pregnant women from the Japan Environment and Children's Study (JECS) who were enrolled between January 2011 and March 2014.

The women were surveyed in the first and second/third trimesters and answered questions about the number of night shifts they worked in a month.

Their responses were divided into three groups: no night shifts reported in either survey (27,655 women); night shifts in the first, but not second survey ('discontinued night shifts,' 1,779 women); and night shifts in both surveys ('continued night shifts,' 2,084 women).

Prenatal sleep length was calculated from self-reported bedtime and wake-up times in the second/third trimester.

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