The association between work stress and inflammatory biomarkers in J ordanian male workers

The study aimed to establish the association of work stress, expressed as effort‐reward imbalance ( ERI ), and C ‐reactive protein ( CRP ) in 152 healthy J ordanian male employees. Self‐report work stress, anthropometric data, and blood for CRP analysis were collected. A significant correlation between ERI and CRP ( r  = 0.29, p  < .01), and between waist circumference with CRP ( r  = 0.44, p  < .01) was found. Central obesity explained most of the variance in CRP after controlling for various covariates, and ERI was not a significant predictor of CRP (Δ R 2  = 0.02; β = 0.15, p  = .052). However, when only the centrally obese group was considered, ERI accounted for 5.0% of the variability in the CRP (β = 0.24, p  < .05). Results of this study confirm previous findings that obesity is significantly associated with CRP , and support the notion that higher ERI amongst obese workers is one small but significant predictor of increased levels of CRP .