Association between exposure to artificial light at night and the occurrence of menarche in Han girls / 中国学校卫生

ABSTRACT

Objective@#To analyze the association between the occurrence of menarche and the exposure to artificial light at night (ALAN) in female Han nationality girls aged 9-18 in China, so as to provide a reference for the research on the disturbance mechanism of ALAN on puberty, as well as provide a scientific evidence for controlling ALAN and making public sanitary policy.@*Methods@#A total of 74 483 Han girls aged 9-18 with complete records of menarche, height, and weight were included in the 2014 Chinese National Surveys on Students Constitution and Health. Pearson correlation was used to explore the correlation between the incidence of menarche and the exposure to artificial light at night in 11-year-old Han girls, and the third quantiles of the area covered by outdoor night lights (0.16, 0.60) and the third quantiles of the average night light intensity [0.97, 5.91 nw/(sr ·cm) 2] were used respectively to divide the study subjects into 3 groups, and the multifactor Logistic regression model was used to analyze the effect of artificial light at night exposure on menarche.@*Results@#In 2014, the median age of menarche of Chinese Han girls was 12.18 years old, and the incidence of menarche in the 11-year-old group was 26.31%. After controlling for body mass index, local population and the logarithmic values of per capita GDP, the incidence of menarche of 11-year-old Han girls was positively correlated with the local outdoor average night light coverage area ratio and the night average light intensity logarithmic adjustment value( r =0.29, 0.30, P <0.05).The higher the local outdoor night light coverage area ratio ( OR =1.28, 1.52) and the average night light intensity ( OR =1.47, 1.58), the higher the incidence of menarche in 11-year-old Han girls( P <0.05).@*Conclusion@#There is a positive correlation between artificial light at night exposure and the menarche rate of 11-year-old Han girls. Research on artificial light at night exposure may provide scientific evidence on puberty onset and its effects on population health.