Light and Exercise in Night-shift Workers

Universitätsklinikum Hamburg-Eppendorf

Status: Completed

Conditions: Healthy Night Shift Workers

Treatments: Other: Exercise; Other: Intensive light therapy

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT01767181

EuRhythDia-1

Details and patient eligibility

About

EuRhythDia is a multicenter, controlled and randomized study. The aim of the study is to investigate the effects of 12 weeks of randomized timed light therapy or timed physical exercise as a chronotherapeutic lifestyle intervention on markers of central and peripheral circadian rhythms and cardiometabolic function in healthy night shift workers.

Full description

Lifestyle interventions have been recognized as important means to prevent and treat cardiometabolic disease. However, compliance of the European population to general recommendations of exercise and weight loss is unsatisfactory. There have been no studies that have attempted to convert the exciting new experimental data on the circadian clock, lifestyle, and cardiometabolic risk into diagnostic tools or novel therapeutic approaches via structured multidisciplinary efforts. One of the aims of the EuRhytDia study is to study novel applications of established lifestyle interventions by co-ordinating the timing of interventions with circadian rhythmicity.

Enrollment: 154 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18+ years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Male and female subjects above the age of 18
• Night shift workers on regular night shifts with at least 3 nights in a row per month during the study period
• Subjects must have been on night shifts for at least 4 weeks before inclusion into the study
• Signed written informed consent

Exclusion criteria

• Regular use of drugs (prescription or non-prescription, exception: contraceptives) or dietary supplements within 4 weeks before inclusion of the study
• Pregnancy or breast feeding
• Any severe somatic or psychic disease (malignant or non-malignant
• Any known ophthalmological condition that prevents the exposure to bright light (e.g. cataract, glaucoma, retinopathy, macular degeneration, acute eye infections, lesions of the cornea)
• Any skin condition or use of drugs associated with increased photosensitivity;
• Any kind of disability that would prevent the subjects from participation in exercise training sessions

Trial design

Primary purpose: Treatment

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: Single Blind

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154 participants in 4 patient groups

A

No Intervention group

Description:

Control group without intervention

B

Experimental group

Description:

Intensive light therapy during the first half of the night shift

Treatment:

Other: Intensive light therapy

C

Experimental group

Description:

Exercise before the beginning of the night shift

Treatment:

Other: Exercise

D

Experimental group

Description:

Exercise after the end of the night shift

Treatment:

Other: Exercise