Spitschan Manuel, Vidafar Parisa, Cain Sean W, Phillips Andrew J K, Lambert Ben C
Department of Health and Sport Sciences, TUM School of Medicine and Health, Technical University of Munich, 80992 Munich, Germany.
TUM Institute for Advanced Study (TUM-IAS), Technical University of Munich, 85748 Garching, Germany.
Clocks Sleep. 2024 Feb 26;6(1):114-128. doi: 10.3390/clockssleep6010009.
In humans, the nocturnal secretion of melatonin by the pineal gland is suppressed by ocular exposure to light. In the laboratory, melatonin suppression is a biomarker for this neuroendocrine pathway. Recent work has found that individuals differ substantially in their melatonin-suppressive response to light, with the most sensitive individuals being up to 60 times more sensitive than the least sensitive individuals. Planning experiments with melatonin suppression as an outcome needs to incorporate these individual differences, particularly in common resource-limited scenarios where running within-subjects studies at multiple light levels is costly and resource-intensive and may not be feasible with respect to participant compliance. Here, we present a novel framework for virtual laboratory melatonin suppression experiments, incorporating a Bayesian statistical model. We provide a Shiny web app for power analyses that allows users to modify various experimental parameters (sample size, individual-level heterogeneity, statistical significance threshold, light levels), and simulate a systematic shift in sensitivity (e.g., due to a pharmacological or other intervention). Our framework helps experimenters to design compelling and robust studies, offering novel insights into the underlying biological variability in melatonin suppression relevant for practical applications.
在人类中，松果体夜间分泌褪黑素会受到眼睛暴露于光线的抑制。在实验室中，褪黑素抑制是这条神经内分泌途径的生物标志物。最近的研究发现，个体对光的褪黑素抑制反应存在很大差异，最敏感的个体比最不敏感的个体敏感达60倍之多。以褪黑素抑制为结果来规划实验需要考虑这些个体差异，尤其是在常见的资源有限的情况下，在多个光照水平下进行受试者内研究成本高昂且资源密集，并且就参与者的依从性而言可能不可行。在此，我们提出了一个用于虚拟实验室褪黑素抑制实验的新框架，纳入了贝叶斯统计模型。我们提供了一个用于功效分析的Shiny网络应用程序，允许用户修改各种实验参数（样本量、个体水平的异质性、统计显著性阈值、光照水平），并模拟敏感性的系统性变化（例如，由于药物或其他干预）。我们的框架有助于实验者设计有说服力且稳健的研究，为与实际应用相关的褪黑素抑制潜在生物学变异性提供新的见解。
