Circadian rhythms, transmeridian travel and jetlag

Investigators: A/Prof Dale Rae and A/Prof Roden

People respond differently to jetlag when travelling across time zones. For some, the symptoms associated with this transient circadian desynchronization are mild, for others severe, and the time taken to recover varies dramatically too. We hypothesized that this might be in part due to a variant in one of our “clock” genes (PER3), which is associated with our chronotype (i.e. preference for mornings or evenings). We investigated whether this variant impacts circadian resynchronization following jetlag and whether it is associated with match performance, incidence of illness and injury in professional rugby players who undertake transmeridian travel between matches. This work was conducted by PhD graduate, Dr Kunorozva.