Lunar and solar influences on human visual disease: the relevance of oedema?

Long-term visual acuity measurements from an eye affected with macular oedema revealed an unexpected rhythm. In order to see if the data bore any evidence of a celestial influence, we made further analyses. A time-series analysis revealed intrinsic rhythms with periods of about 30 days, i.e. circalunar rhythms. A plot of the data according to the phase of the Moon indicated that acuity was highest at the full moon and lowest at the new moon. We also found that the Sun, which rotates once in about 27 days also reduces the acuity via its sunspots. The results have significance not only for visual diseases expressing macular oedema, such as diabetes, but also for other diseases featuring oedema. The mechanism of the effect remains debatable.

Keywords:

• Moon
• Sun
• visual acuity
• macular oedema
• circalunar rhythm
• moonlight

Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Jane and Steve Daley Bequest (University of Sydney). We are indebted to Annick Ansselin, Jack Carmody, Alan Day, Bogdan Dreher, John Ludbrook, Chris Murphy and Chun Wang for valuable comments. However, we accept full responsibility for any residual errors in the manuscript. We are particularly grateful to Laszlo Kiss for assistance and advice on time-series analysis. We thank John Dodson and Joe Pridham for technical assistance.