Evidence suggests that light and circadian rhythms profoundly influence the physiologic capacity with which an organism responds to stress. However, the ramifications of light spectrum on the course of critical illness remain to be determined. Here, we show that acute exposure to bright blue spectrum light reduces organ injury by comparison with bright red spectrum or ambient white fluorescent ...

Bright light therapy for seasonal affective disorder (SAD) has been investigated and applied for over 20 years. Physicians and clinicians are increasingly confident that bright light therapy is a potent, specifically active, nonpharmaceutical treatment modality. Indeed, the domain of light treatment is moving beyond SAD, to nonseasonal depression (unipolar and bipolar), seasonal flare-ups of bu...

BACKGROUND Bright light treatment is effective for seasonal affective disorder (SAD), although the mechanisms of action are still unknown. We investigated whether transcranial bright light via the ear canals has an antidepressant effect in the treatment of SAD. METHODS During the four-week study period, 89 patients (67 females; 22 males, aged 22-65, mean ± SD age: 43.2 ± 10.9 years) suffering...

OBJECTIVE Bright light treatment is an established treatment for Seasonal Affective Disorder, but in non-seasonal depression research results have been contrasting. METHOD This study was designed as a 5-week controlled, double-blind, parallel trial in out-patients with a diagnosis (DSM-IV) of non-seasonal major depression, randomized to either active treatment (white light, 10 000 lux, 1 h da...

We compare the retinal rod photocurrent before and after introduction of an hydrolysis-resistant analog of GTP into the outer segment by the whole-cell patch technique. Others have shown that GTP bound to transducin leads to the hydrolysis of cyclic GMP, causing the response to light--a decrease in dark current. The hydrolysis-resistant GTP analog prolongs the response to a bright flash, which ...

The study investigated the effect of bright blue-enriched versus blue-suppressed indoor light on sleep and wellbeing of healthy participants over 65 years. Twenty-nine participants in 20 private houses in a uniform settlement in Copenhagen were exposed to two light epochs of 3 weeks with blue-enriched (280 lux) and 3 weeks blue-suppressed (240 lux) indoor light or vice versa from 8 to 13 pm in ...

Eight male subjects were exposed to either bright light or dim light between 0600 and 0900 h for 3 consecutive days each. Relative to the dim light condition, the bright light treatment advanced the evening rise in plasma melatonin and the time of sleep termination (sleep onset was held constant) for an average approximately 1 h. The magnitude of the advance of the plasma melatonin rise was dep...

1512 CLINICALCHEMISTRY,Vol. 26, No. 10, 1980 lution containing 1.25 smolfL was degraded after 1 mm. When exposed to light of wavelength 254 nm, tryptophan was alsorapidlydegraded,although less quickly than in bright sunlight: 64% in the 5 itmol/L solution was destroyed after 15 mm exposure,whileatthelower concentration no detectable tryptophan remained after 30-mm exposure. Tryptophan in the su...

Although the light-induced melatonin suppression response is well characterized in adults, studies examining the dynamics of this effect in children are scarce. The purpose of this study was to quantify the magnitude of evening light-induced melatonin suppression in preschool-age children. Healthy children (n = 10; 7 females; 4.3 ± 1.1 years) participated in a 7-day protocol. On days 1-5, child...

PURPOSE To further test the hypothesis that light-adaptation-mediated photoreceptor protection works through inhibition of apoptosis by activation and/or upregulation of neuroprotective molecules. METHODS Albino rats were born and raised in 5-lux cyclic light (12 hours OFF and ON). At 8 weeks of age, animals were adapted to 400-lux cyclic light for different periods. Light damage was induced ...