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Absence of an Increase in the Duration of the Circadian Melatonin Secretory Episode in Totally Blind Human Subjects¹

Circadian, Neuroendocrine, and Sleep Disorders Section, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts 02115

Address all correspondence and requests for reprints to: Dr. E. B. Klerman, Circadian, Neuroendocrine, and Sleep Disorders Section, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, 221 Longwood Avenue, Boston, Massachusetts 02115. E-mail: ebklerman{at}hms.harvard.edu

Abstract

The daily rhythm of melatonin influences multiple physiological measures, including sleep tendency, circadian rhythms, and reproductive function in seasonally breeding mammals. The biological signal for photoperiodic changes in seasonally breeding mammals is a change in the duration of melatonin secretion, which in a natural environment reflects the different durations of daylight across the year, with longer nights leading to a longer duration of melatonin secretion. These seasonal changes in the duration of melatonin secretion do not simply reflect the known acute suppression of melatonin secretion by ocular light exposure, but also represent long-term changes in the endogenous nocturnal melatonin episode that persist in constant conditions. As the eyes of totally blind individuals do not transmit ocular light information, we hypothesized that the duration of the melatonin secretory episode in blind subjects would be longer than those in sighted individuals, who are exposed to light for all their waking hours in an urban environment. We assessed the melatonin secretory profile during constant posture, dim light conditions in 17 blind and 157 sighted adults, all of whom were healthy and using no prescription or nonprescription medications. The duration of melatonin secretion was not significantly different between blind and sighted individuals. Healthy blind individuals after years without ocular light exposure do not have a longer duration of melatonin secretion than healthy sighted individuals.

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