Circadian rhythms are generated by the body clock, allowing human to anticipate and respond to the 24-hour cycle of the planet. Maintaining a good body clock is generally believed to lead to good health for humans, and disrupting the circadian rhythm-or example, working night shifts has been associated with immune diseases such as multiple sclerosis; however, the underlying molecular links have been unclear.
Immune responses and regulation of autoimmunity are affected by the time of the day when the immune response is activated. Using mice as a model organism, they show that a master circadian gene, BMAL1, is responsible for sensing and acting on time-of-the-day cues to suppress inflammation.
Loss of BMAL1, or induction of autoimmunity at midday instead of midnight, causes more severe experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis, which is essentially an analogue of multiple sclerosis in mice. Immune system is programmed to respond better to infection and insults encountered at different immune in the 24-hour clock.
This has significant implications for the treatment of immune-mediated diseases and suggests there may be important differences in time of day response to drugs used to treat autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis. Disruption of human body clocks, which is quite common now given our 24/7 lifestyle and erratic eating and sleeping patterns, may have an impact on autoimmune conditions.
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