Profil Kyriaki Papantoniou

Education

Kyriaki Papantoniou holds a Medical Doctor (MD) degree from the University of Patras, Greece, a Master´s in Public Health (MPH) and a Doctoral degree (Ph.D.) in Epidemiology from the Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona, Spain.

Dr. Papantoniou’s doctoral thesis "Cancer risk and hormonal changes in night shift workers" was carried out in the Centre for Research in Environmental Epidemiology (CREAL) in Barcelona, Spain and partly in the Chronobiology group of the University of Surrey in the UK. Her thesis was nominated the European PhD Mention and the Extraordinary Prize for the best thesis in 2015 of the Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona, Spain.

Research description

Her main research interests are circadian and sleep epidemiology and specifically circadian disruption as a potential environmental and occupational cause of cancer. She has evaluated the association between night shift work and risk for breast and prostate cancer in a large multi-case-control study in Spain (MCC-Spain). She also has a strong interest in the underlying biological mechanisms involved in carcinogenesis and studied the hormonal changes that occur with night work in real life settings. She described the disruption of daily hormonal rhythms such as melatonin and sex steroid biomarkers in night workers in the field, taking into account individual characteristics such as chronotype. 

Her current research focuses on the effects of light at night, circadian and sleep disruption on gastrointestinal tumors and other chronic disease outcomes, including the use of biomarkers of cardiometabolic risk in real-life shift work studies. She is involved in a number of ongoing projects such as the association between rotating shift work and colorectal cancer risk in the Nurses Health Study (NHS) and NHS II, two large prospective cohorts of US registered nurses. In addition she is collaborating with the University Hospital (AKH) clinicians to make use of the rich clinical data and test new research questions.

Selected Publications:

1. Papantoniou K, Massa J, Devore E, Munger K, Chitnis T, Ascherio A, Schernhammer E. Rotating night shift work and multiple sclerosis in the Nurses’ Health Studies. Occup Environ Med. 2019 Oct;76(10):733-738. doi: 10.1136/oemed-2019-106016. Epub 2019 Aug 12.
2. Papantoniou K, Devore E, Massa J, Strohmaier S, Vetter C, Yang L, Yan S, Giovanucci E, Speizer F, Schernhammer E. Rotating night shift work and colorectal cancer risk in the Nurses’ Health Studies with 24 years of follow-up. Int J Cancer. 2018 Dec 1;143(11):2709-2717.
3. Papantoniou K, Castaño-Vinyals G, Espinosa A, Turner MC, Alonso-Aguado MH, Vicente M, Nuria Aragonés N, Pérez-Gómez B, Pozo BM, Gómez-Acebo I, Ardanaz E, Altzibar JM, Peiro R, Tardon A, Lorca JA, Chirlaque MD, García-Palomo A, Jimenez-Moleon JJ, Dierssen T, Ederra M, Amiano P, Marina Pollan M, Moreno V, Kogevinas M. Shift work and colorectal cancer risk in the MCC-Spain case-control study. Scand J Work Environ Health. 2017 May 1;43(3):250-259
4. Papantoniou K, Pozo OJ, Espinosa A, Marcos J, Castaño-Vinyals G, Basagaña X, Pagès EJ, Mirabent J, Martín J, Such Faro P, Gascó Aparici A, Middleton B, Skene DJ, Kogevinas M. Increased and Mistimed Sex Hormone Production in Night Shift Workers. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev. 2015 May;24(5):854-63
5. Papantoniou K, Castaño-Vinyals G, Espinosa A, Aragonés N, Pérez-Gómez B, Burgos J, Gómez-Acebo I, Llorca J, Peiró R, Jimenez-Moleón JJ, Arredondo F, Tardón A, et al. Night shift work, chronotype and prostate cancer risk in the MCC-Spain case-control study. Int J Cancer. 2015 Sep 1;137(5):1147-57