ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2021
Hormone seasonality in medical records suggests circannual endocrine circuits.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 45 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
45 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 114 citations in OpenAlex.
- A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Free Triiodothyronine (FT3) Levels in Humans Depending on Seasonal Air Temperature Changes: Is the Variation in FT3 Levels Related to Nonshivering Thermogenesis?International journal of molecular sciences · 2023Pooled it
- Quantification of beta-cell carrying capacity in prediabetes.PLoS computational biology · 2026Article
- The Circadian-Light-Hygiene Hypothesis: A Potential Modulator of Fertility and Birthrate Trends.Biology · 2026Review
- Influence of Seasonal and Chronobiological Factors on Driver Behavior and Traffic Accident Risk: A Scoping Review.Sleep science (Sao Paulo, Brazil) · 2026Review
- Global trends in human birth and death seasonality reveal climate-related shifts in reproductive timing.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Short-chain fatty acids mediate interactions between immune responses and commensal bacteria in high altitude yaks.Communications biology · 2025Article
- Genome-wide gene-environment interaction study uncovers 162 vitamin D status variants using a precise ambient UVB measure.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Unifying regulatory motifs in endocrine circuits.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Serum IGF-1 and IGFBP-3 levels in healthy Korean men aged 19-40 years: a cross-sectional analysis of reference ranges and seasonal variation.Translational and clinical pharmacology · 2025Article
- Article
- Fabrication of 3D Printed Microneedle Patch for the Simultaneous Delivery and Detection of Melatonin from Interstitial Fluid.AAPS PharmSciTech · 2025Article
- Non-human primate seasonal transcriptome atlas reveals seasonal changes in physiology and diseases.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Pregnancy and postpartum dynamics revealed by millions of lab tests.Science advances · 2025Article
- Cross-Sex Hormone Therapy Is Associated With Loss of Circadian Rhythm in the Male Rat.Hypertension (Dallas, Tex. : 1979) · 2025Article
- The impact of seasonal variations on IVF pregnancy outcomes: a retrospective cohort study in Jinan, China.Frontiers in medicine · 2025Article
- Let's Talk About It in the Morning: How Circadian Rhythms Impact Information Sharing on Social Media.Affective science · 2024Article
- Coldness or Darkness? Which Places Greater Stress on the Thyroid? Seasonal Changes in Thyroid-Stimulating Hormone and Thyroid Hormones.Journal of clinical medicine · 2024Article
- The associations between exposure to mixed environmental endocrine disruptors and sex steroid hormones in men: a comparison of different statistical models.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- One seasonal clock fits all?Journal of comparative physiology. A, Neuroethology, sensory, neural, and behavioral physiology · 2024Review
- Chrono-Endocrinology in Clinical Practice: A Journey from Pathophysiological to Therapeutic Aspects.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
11 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Hormones control the major biological functions of stress response, growth, metabolism, and reproduction. In animals, these hormones show pronounced seasonality, with different set-points for different seasons. In humans, the seasonality of these hormones remains unclear, due to a lack of datasets large enough to discern common patterns and cover all hormones. Here, we analyze an Israeli health record on 46 million person-years, including millions of hormone blood tests. We find clear seasonal patterns: The effector hormones peak in winter-spring, whereas most of their upstream regulating pituitary hormones peak only months later, in summer. This delay of months is unexpected because known delays in the hormone circuits last hours. We explain the precise delays and amplitudes by proposing and testing a mechanism for the circannual clock: The gland masses grow with a timescale of months due to trophic effects of the hormones, generating a feedback circuit with a natural frequency of about a year that can entrain to the seasons. Thus, humans may show coordinated seasonal set-points with a winter-spring peak in the growth, stress, metabolism, and reproduction axes.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.