Liu Peter Y
Division of Endocrinology, Department of Medicine, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Harbor-UCLA Medical Center and Genomics Institute, The Lundquist Institute, Torrance, CA, United States.
Front Toxicol. 2024 Sep 16;6:1481385. doi: 10.3389/ftox.2024.1481385. eCollection 2024.
Technological advances have led to a modern-day lighting and smartphone revolution, with artificial light exposure at night increasing to levels never before seen in the evolutionary history of living systems on Earth. Light as a pollutant, however, remains largely unrecognized, and the reproductive effects of light pollution are mostly if not entirely unconsidered. This is despite the reproductive system being intricately linked to metabolism and the circadian system, both of which can be disturbed even by low levels of light. Here, we aim to change this perspective by reviewing the physiological and pathophysiological mechanisms by which light exposure alters the intricate hormonal, metabolic and reproductive networks that are relevant to reproductive toxicology. Nascent human studies have recently identified the photoreceptors responsible for the light dose relationship with melatonin suppression and circadian re-entrainment, directly shown the association between the alignment of light-dark cycles with activity-rest cycles on metabolic health and provided proof-of-principle that properly timed blue light-enriched and blue light-depleted delivery can accelerate circadian re-entrainment. With these advances, there is now a need to consider testicular effects of light pollution.
技术进步引发了现代照明和智能手机革命，夜间人工光照暴露增加到了地球上生物系统进化史上前所未有的水平。然而，光作为一种污染物在很大程度上仍未得到认识，光污染对生殖的影响即便不是完全被忽视，也大多未被考虑。尽管生殖系统与新陈代谢和昼夜节律系统紧密相连，而即使是低水平的光照也会干扰这两个系统。在此，我们旨在通过回顾光照改变与生殖毒理学相关的复杂激素、代谢和生殖网络的生理及病理生理机制来改变这一观点。新生的人体研究最近已确定了与褪黑素抑制和昼夜节律重新同步的光剂量关系相关的光感受器，直接表明了明暗周期与活动-休息周期的同步对代谢健康的影响，并提供了原理证明，即适时给予富含蓝光和缺乏蓝光的光照可以加速昼夜节律重新同步。随着这些进展，现在有必要考虑光污染对睾丸的影响。
