Why evening-types accumulate health issues and die younger than others?

Descrizione del progetto

I rischi celati per la salute a cui vanno incontro i nottambuli

Alcune persone sorgono armoniosamente con il sole, mentre altre si animano di notte; queste preferenze innate, note come tipi circadiani, determinano il sonno, la veglia e persino i cicli ormonali. Le persone che prediligono la notte, tuttavia, devono affrontare un costo nascosto, in quanto hanno maggiori probabilità di sviluppare problemi di salute, dall’infanzia all’età adulta. Alla luce di tali premesse, il progetto ChronoHealth, finanziato dal CER, approfondirà le ragioni alla base di questo fenomeno. La colpa è della biologia, oppure è il nostro mondo moderno, con orari rigidi di scuola e lavoro, a costringere i nottambuli a un ritmo a cui non si adattano? Attingendo a un eccezionale combinazione di dati genetici, comportamentali e ambientali dalla prima infanzia alla terza età, ChronoHealth si propone di analizzare il modo in cui lo stile di vita, l’ambiente e la genetica interagiscono tra loro per plasmare la salute a lungo termine.

Obiettivo

Individuals differ in daily timing of sleep–wake behavior, alertness, body temperature, cardiovascular functions and hormonal secretion, having innately different circadian types from morningness to eveningness. Evening-types show poorer health already since childhood with increasing severity of health issues at adulthood with major impact on performance/wellbeing and health care burden. However, it is largely unknown WHY health issues accumulate to evening-types. It is likely that underlying factors for health differences between circadian types include interplay between biological, behavioral and environmental factors. Project uses large population-based longitudinal and cross-sectional data across life span from early childhood to old age linked to national register data, including wellbeing and health surveys, objective circadian assessment, health measurements and genetic data. I will study which environmental, behavioral and biological factors influence circadian rhythms and their disturbances throughout life span and how these moderate/mediate the association between circadian type and health/wellbeing outcomes. Focus during early childhood will be in somatic and cognitive development, during adolescence in school adjustment, life habits and somatic/mental wellbeing, and during adulthood in disorders, hospital treatments, and mortality. I will examine the role of genetic predisposition, family/school/work/social environment, life habits and behavioral schedules. Besides the unique and versatile data available for the research, novel objective tools for assessing circadian misalignment is developed in the project. Along with my expertise on circadian research, this project has versatile data and statistical power to sort out whether health issues among evening-types are more due to biological liability, such as genetic risk, or due to e.g. higher risk for circadian desynchronization as behavioral and societal schedules are in mismatch with the innate rhythms.