Background: Working in the healthcare industry has its effects on the female workers fecundity. Disorders of reproduction is listed as one of the top ten leading work-related diseases and injuries. The objective of this study is to observe the occurrences of adverse pregnancy outcomes among female healthcare workers in relation to their work schedules and identify the most frequent adverse pregnancy outcome. Methods: A cross-sectional study was carried out obtaining pregnancy history and work schedule in the past three years. In the present study 469 respondents were obtained; 339 healthcare and 130 non-healthcare workers reporting a total of 564 pregnancies. Results: In this study, adverse pregnancy outcomes among female healthcare workers is significantly higher than non-healthcare workers. There is no significant findings between healthcare and non-healthcare workers with respect to the types of adverse pregnancy outcomes and the work schedule. However, from the respondents' lifetime pregnancy outcome, it is found that complete miscarriage occurred most frequently at 26.7% and among healthcare workers who work on shift. Conclusion: Healthcare workers carry a higher risk to experience adverse pregnancy outcome with complete miscarriage being the most common and most of these experiences occurs among those who work on shift/on-call.
Mild sleep deprivation is widespread in many societies worldwide. Electroencephalography (EEG) microstate analysis provides information on spatial and temporal characteristics of resting brain network, serving as an indicator of neurophysiological activities at rest. This study seeks to investigate potential neural markers in EEG following mild sleep deprivation of a single night using EEG microstate analysis. Six-minute resting EEG was conducted on thirty healthy adults within 6 hours of waking in the morning and after at least 18 h of sleep deprivation. Translated and validated Malay language Karolinska Sleepiness Scale was used to assess the participants' degree of sleepiness. Microstate characteristics analysis was conducted on the final 24 subjects based on four standard microstate maps. Microstate C shows a significant increase in mean duration, coverage and occurrence, while microstate D has significantly higher occurrence after sleep deprivation. This study demonstrates notable changes in resting state EEG microstates following mild sleep deprivation. Present findings deepen our understanding of the brain's spatiotemporal dynamics under this condition and suggest the potential utility of neural markers in this domain as components of composite markers for sleep deprivation.