{"doi":"10.13023/etd.2020.396","title":"ELUCIDATING THE ROLE OF LIGHT-INDUCED CIRCADIAN DISRUPTION ON ATHEROSCLEROSIS IN APOLIPOPROTEINE-DEFICIENT MICE","abstract":"Circadian rhythms are approximately 24-hour oscillations of nearly every biological process in the body. The circadian system coordinates these rhythms of physiology and behavior with environmental cycles such as the light-dark cycle. Shift workers, who experience irregular exposure to the light-dark cycle, have chronically disrupted circadian rhythms and increased risk of developing cardiovascular disease, but the mechanisms are unknown. Our studies investigated the effects of light-induced circadian disruption on atherosclerosis in ApolipoproteinE-deficient (ApoE-/-) mice. We found that male ApoE-/- mice housed in constant light for 12 weeks, which results in severe disruption of circadian rhythms or arrhythmicity, developed significantly more atherosclerosis compared to mice in control light-dark conditions, and this increase was attributed to increased atherogenic VLDL/LDL cholesterol fractions. Next, we mimicked circadian disruption experienced by shift workers by housing ApoE-/- mice in chronic jet lag conditions where the light-dark cycle was advanced by 6-hours every week for 12 weeks. In female ApoE-/- mice, we found that that chronic jet lag caused a 70% increase in atherosclerosis and a 23% increase in cholesterol, which was in VLDL/LDL fractions. Together, these data show that light-induced circadian disruption increases atherosclerosis, in part via exacerbated dyslipidemia.","journal":"UKnowledge (University of Kentucky)","year":2020,"id":130904,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":0,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9561,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2020-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":470649,"name":"Jeffrey M. Chalfant","orcid":null,"position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":265,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:16:00.235845Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}