Excessive screen use has been linked to obesity and psychological problems. Now, a new study has identified a new problem: a study in fruit flies suggests that our basic cellular functions could be affected by the blue light emitted by these devices. These results are published in Frontiers in Aging .
"Excessive exposure to blue light from everyday devices, such as televisions, laptops and phones, can have detrimental effects on a wide range of cells in our body, from skin and fat cells to sensory neurons," the study said. Dr. Jadwiga Giebultowicz, a professor in the Department of Integrative Biology at Oregon State University and lead author of this study. “We are the first to show that levels of specific metabolites (chemicals that are essential for cells to function properly) are altered in fruit flies exposed to blue light.”
“Our study suggests that avoiding excessive exposure to blue light may be a good anti-aging strategy,” Giebultowicz advised.
Turn off the light
Researchers at Oregon State University have previously shown that fruit flies exposed to light "turn on" stress-protective genes, and that those kept in constant darkness live longer.
"To understand why high-energy blue light is responsible for accelerating aging in fruit flies, we compared metabolite levels in flies exposed to blue light for two weeks with those kept in complete darkness," Giebultowicz explained.
Exposure to blue light caused significant differences in the levels of metabolites measured by the researchers in the flies’ head cells. In particular, they found that levels of the metabolite succinate increased, but glutamate levels decreased.
“Succinate is essential to produce fuel for the function and growth of each cell. The high levels of succinate after exposure to blue light can be compared to gasoline that is at the pump but does not enter the car,” Giebultowicz said. "Another worrying discovery was that molecules responsible for communication between neurons, such as glutamate, are at the lowest level after exposure to blue light."
Accelerate aging
The changes recorded by the researchers suggest that the cells are operating at a suboptimal level, and this may cause their premature death and also explain their previous findings that blue light accelerates aging.
“LEDs have become the primary lighting in displays such as phones, desktop computers and televisions, as well as in ambient lighting, so humans in advanced societies are exposed to blue light through LED lighting during most of his waking hours. The signaling chemicals in the cells of flies and humans are the same, so there is potential for negative effects of blue light in humans,” explains Giebultowicz.
Future work hopes to study the effects directly on human cells.
“We used quite strong blue light on flies: humans are exposed to less intense light, so cell damage may be less dramatic. “The results of this study suggest that future research with human cells is needed to establish the extent to which human cells can show similar changes in metabolites involved in energy production in response to excessive exposure to blue light,” Giebultowicz concluded.
