The association between outdoor light at night exposure and adult obesity in Northeastern China

ABSTRACT

Previous studies have linked exposure to light at night (LAN) with various health outcomes, but evidence is limited for the LAN-obesity association. Thestudy analysed data from 24,845 participants of the 33 Communities Chinese Health Study and obesity (BMI ≥28 kg/m²) was defined according to the Working Group on Obesity in China. The Global Radiance Calibrated Nighttime Lights data were used to estimate participants’ LAN exposure. The mixed-effect regression models examined the LAN-BMI and LAN-obesity association. We found that higher LAN exposure was significantly associated with greater BMI and higher risk of obesity. Changes of BMI and the odds ratios (ORs) of obesity and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for 2^nd, 3^rd, and 4^th against the 1^st quartile of LAN exposure were 0.363 (0.208, 0.519), 0.364 (0.211, 0.516) and 0.217 (0.051, 0.383); 1.228 (1.099, 1.371), 1.356 (1.196, 1.538) and 1.269 (1.124, 1.433), respectively. Age and regular exercise showed significant modification effects on the LAN-obesity association.

KEYWORDS:

• Light at night
• BMI
• obesity
• adults

Acknowledgements

We would like to express our gratitude to staff who assisted with data collection, and all participants in this study for their time and efforts.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/09603123.2023.2165046

Informed consent statement

Informed consent was obtained from all subjects involved in the study prior to commencement.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China(No. 2018YFC1004300, 2018YFC1004301, 2018YFE0106900), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant numbers: 81872583, 81673128, M-0420, 81872582, 81903279), Guangdong Provincial Natural Science Foundation Team Project (grant number: 2018B030312005), Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province (grant numbers: 2021B1515020015; 2020A1515011131, 2019A050510017, 2018B05052007, 2017A090905042), and Basic and Applied Basic Research Project of Guangzhou Municipal Science and Technology Bureau (grant number: 202102020275).