Background: Cardiovascular Diseases (CVDs) are the number one cause of death, representing 31.8% of all global deaths. Several lifestyle behaviours are associated with the development and clinical manifestation of CVDs, however, these behavioural risk factors by themselves do not fully explain the population burden of CVDs. There is increasing recognition that working conditions and risk factors of the work environment are associated with health, including the development of CVDs. We will

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... atically review observational studies of adults exposed to work risk factors and their association with CVDs.Methods: We will follow the Navigation Guide framework. We will include cohort and case-control studies. The population will be adults of working age (18-65). The exposure will include six categories of work exposure: job strain, effort-reward imbalance, long working hours, job insecurity, shift work and occupational noise; the comparator will be the unexposed group or specified control group. The outcomes will be cerebrovascular diseases, ischaemic heart disease and hypertensive diseases. Published and unpublished studies will be included. The selection, data extraction, risk of bias assessment, quality assessment and strength of evidence will be carried out by two reviewers independently and disagreements will be solved by a third. Due to the diversity in the populations and exposures in the studies, the synthesis of the results, the quality and the strength of the evidence will be done by a synthesis without meta-analysis (SWiM), following the SWiM reporting guideline.Discussion: This systematic review will identify and synthesise the evidence for the association between work risk factors and risk of CVDs. This work will underpin and inform a broader objective to examine the effectiveness of interventions to minimise the effects of risk factors for CVDs in workplaces, with the final aim of informing occupational health policies in the future. Systematic review registration: PROSPERO CRD42020179972.