Cardiovascular disease risk differences between bus company employees and general workers according to the Korean National Health Insurance Data.

Background: Bus drivers are known to be highly at risk of cardiovascular diseases. In this study, we assessed the cardiovascular disease prevalence of bus company employees in Seoul, South Korea, and compared the results to those of general workers.

Methods: We analyzed the 2014 Korean National Health Insurance (NHI) data and defined hypertension, diabetes, dyslipidemia, ischemic heart disease, and cerebrovascular disease based on the KCD-6 medical diagnoses. We used bus company employees as surrogate participants of bus drivers due to the characteristics of Korean NHI data. We identified bus company employees in Seoul based on one's workplace which the insurance is registered. The prevalence of five diseases was compared between the bus company employees and general workers. We also calculated the odds ratios (OR) of five diseases between the bus company employees and general workers. To compensate the vast demographical differences between the two groups, we performed propensity score matching.

Results: Bus company employees have higher OR for having hypertension (OR 1.33, 95% CI: 1.28-1.39), diabetes mellitus (1.14, 95% CI: 1.08-1.22), and dyslipidemia (1.23, 95% CI: 1.17-1.29) than the general workers or propensity score matched controls. However, the OR of having ischemic heart disease were not significant. The OR of cerebrovascular disease were lower in bus company employees than in the general workers after adjusting the covariates, but similar in the propensity score matched model.

Conclusion: This study showed that the ORs of cardiovascular disease risk factors are high in bus company employees when compared to the general working population. Further studies with the longitudinal design should be conducted to confirm the causal association.