Published in:
01-02-2020 | Editorial
How good is the evidence that light at night can affect human health?
Authors:
David Hicks, Dina Attia, Francine Behar-Cohen, Samuel Carré, Olivier Enouf, Jack Falcon, Claude Gronfier, Christophe Martinsons, Arnaud Metlaine, Leena Tahkamo, Alicia Torriglia, FrançoiseViénot
Published in:
Graefe's Archive for Clinical and Experimental Ophthalmology
|
Issue 2/2020
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Excerpt
Light pollution and exposure to artificial light at night (ALAN) have become almost universal in the modern world. Although there is an ongoing debate about how such environmental changes can affect human well-being and health, there is no doubt that ALAN perturbs the circadian clock – an ancestral system which synchronizes bodily physiology with the day-night cycle. The eye, especially the retina, has a dual role in this story – on the one hand, it is the unique source of light entry to the central clock in the brain, and on the other, eyes themselves are strongly regulated by endogenous circadian clocks. This editorial gives a very brief overview of the situation and poses certain unanswered questions. …
