Sex-Related Differences Linked to Depression Disorders and Chronic Inflammation Diseases in Nursing Shift Workers: An Expsloratory Multidimensional Literature Review

Objective: The objective of this literature review is to explore how depression and inflammatory conditions relate to gender among nurses working shifts. Methods: Relevant studies available on the PubMed database over the past decade were consulted. The main keywords were: “shift nurses”, “depression”, “gender Shift Nurses”, “Gender Role”, “shift nurse”, “gender roles”, “Inflammation” and then, free terms were combined with the Boolean AND operator. Inclusion and exclusion criteria had been formerly identified, and then, all the selected studies were assessed according to the following criteria, good description, and appropriateness of study design (objective and method), sample (sufficiently numerous, clarity of treatment allocation criteria, absence of important bias), intervention, outcomes, statistical analysis, and clinical relevance. Results: 61 titles concerning research on inflammation were found. 28 titles were not taken into account as doubles whilst 33 were selected by title and abstract; in addition, 28 were discarded because they were not relevant to the objective or because they did not meet the inclusion criteria. Out of the remaining 5, a further 2 were also discarded upon a careful analysis of the whole text: they did not prove relevant to the research question. As for the research related to depression, the research strategy highlighted 186 articles in the first place and then eliminated 165 of them either because they were duplicates or on the grounds that they did not answer the research questions; 21 texts were thoroughly analyzed and, after a careful read, 4 studies were eventually incorporated in this review. Conclusion: Since data available in the literature were inconsistent, it was difficult to establish that all depression conditions could be associated with an increase in inflammation and vice versa and that this condition was strictly connected to the female gender.