Investigating the Role of Biochemical Stress Markers in Assessing Driving Induced Fatigue

Abstract

Fatigue is a condition of extreme tiredness under the influence of which a person enters into a physiological state with reduced mental or physical performance capability. This can be results of physical and/or mental activities such as sleep loss or extended wakefulness, altered circadian phase, or workload. This state impairs a person’s alertness and ability to safely operate a task or perform safety related duties. There are various groups of people which are considered to be at risk from the driver tiredness or fatigue. Among them are night workers, lorry drivers, people driving home after the night shift, company car drivers, etc. The main causes of fatigue are due to extended hours of monotonous work, absence of proper ventilation, stressful jobs, exposure to environmental factors like heat, noise, vibration, etc. Other major symptoms includes drowsiness, daydreaming, poor judgement, trouble in focussing, bad quality sleep, lack of sleep, and sleep demands induced by the internal biological clock, etc. In drivers prolonged driving increases the risk of getting fatigue, especially when they do not take sufficient rest/break in between driving. Under the influence of fatigue, there is continuous deterioration of driving performance, slow reaction time, reduced steering performance, poor concentration, unable to keep up distance between vehicles, and are susceptible to mentally withdrawn from the driving task. The main objective of this study was focused on assessing the severity fatigue with duration of simulated/real time driving from molecular level biomarkers i.e. CK-MB, lactate and platelet rich plasma serotonin. Briefly ten numbers each of non-trained and trained drivers were selected for the study. The non-trained drivers were subjected to simulated driving session over 12 hrs while the auto-rickshaw drivers were considered as trained drivers and the study was also carried out for 12 hrs. The proposed biomarkers were assessed from pooled blood samples in each group at three time points (0h, 6h and 12h). Further, the subjective feeling of fatigue was estimated using an array of subjective assessment tools (Epsworth Sleepness Scale, Berlin quaestionnaire and Beck’s depression inventory). All the blood biomarkers showed significant trend across the time points with fatigue progression. Further, the parameters exhibited significant correlation with subjective assessment scores. The study concluded that the proposed blood bio-markers in combination might be used for fatigue staging in drivers reliably.