Electric light disrupts human gene expression

By Joe Alcock on April 14, 2015 • ( Leave a comment )

Light exposure enables night shift work, but also has body wide effects on circadian gene expression. This gene-environment mismatch contributes to cancer, depression, and cardiovascular disease. The harmful effects of artificial light were explored in Stevens and Zhu in this month’s Philisophical Transactions B.

From the abstract:

“Over the past 3 billion years, an endogenous circadian rhythmicity has developed in almost all life forms in which daily oscillations in physiology occur. This allows for anticipation of sunrise and sunset. This physiological rhythmicity is kept at precisely 24 h by the daily cycle of sunlight and dark. However, since the introduction of electric lighting, there has been inadequate light during the day inside buildings for a robust resetting of the human endogenous circadian rhythmicity, and too much light at night for a true dark to be detected; this results in circadian disruption and alters sleep/wake cycle, core body temperature, hormone regulation and release, and patterns of gene expression throughout the body. The question is the extent to which circadian disruption compromises human health, and can account for a portion of the modern pandemics of breast and prostate cancers, obesity, diabetes and depression. As societies modernize (i.e. electrify) these conditions increase in prevalence. There are a number of promising leads on putative mechanisms, and epidemiological findings supporting an aetiologic role for electric lighting in disease causation. These include melatonin suppression, circadian gene expression, and connection of circadian rhythmicity to metabolism in part affected by haem iron intake and distribution.”

The article is here: Electric light, particularly at night, disrupts human circadian rhythmicity: is that a problem?

From ACEP News: Combat Sleep Disorders after Night Shifts