ReviewBMC biology2022
Time of day as a critical variable in biology.
Review in BMC biology, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 25 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
25 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- A meta-analysis investigating the outcomes and correlation between heart rate variability biofeedback training on depressive symptoms and heart rate variability outcomes versus standard treatment in comorbid adult populations.Acta bio-medica : Atenei Parmensis · 2023Pooled it
- Chronic exposure to artificial light at night dampens rhythms in locomotor activity, metabolism, and sleep in female mice.Physiology & behavior · 2026Article
- Daily rhythms in fear extinction memory reflect structural and functional changes in a prefrontal-amygdala circuit.Brain structure & function · 2026Article
- The biological clock in parkinson's disease: mechanisms and chronotherapy.NPJ Parkinson's disease · 2026Review
- School-Based Physical Activity, Cognitive Performance and Circadian Rhythms: Rethinking the Timing of Movement in Education.Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Predicting postpartum female sexual interest/arousal disorder via adiponectin and biopsychosocial factors: a cohort-based decision tree study.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Red Light Sensitivity of Non-image and Image Forming Visual Systems of Laboratory Rodents: Circadian Disruption and Behavioral Detection.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2025Article
- The time is now: accounting for time-of-day effects to improve reproducibility and translation of metabolism research.Nature metabolism · 2025Review
- Sex differences in olfactory behavior and neurophysiology in Long Evans rats.Journal of neurophysiology · 2025Article
- Light Cycle Phase Effects on Behavioral Responses to Stress Exposure in Rats.Journal of the American Association for Laboratory Animal Science : JAALAS · 2025Article
- Beyond Lux: methods for species and photoreceptor-specific quantification of ambient light for mammals.BMC biology · 2024Article
- Through an animal's eye: the implications of diverse sensory systems in scientific experimentation.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Review
- Researchers need to better address time-of-day as a critical biological variable.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Time of sample collection is critical for the replicability of microbiome analyses.Nature metabolism · 2024Article
- Recommendations for measuring and standardizing light for laboratory mammals to improve welfare and reproducibility in animal research.PLoS biology · 2024Article
- Time of day bias for biological sampling in studies of mammary cancer.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Intestinal microbial circadian rhythms drive sex differences in host immunity and metabolism.iScience · 2023Article
- Occupational Exposure to Electromagnetic Fields-Different from General Public Exposure and Laboratory Studies.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2023Article
- Therapeutic Aspects of Circadian Rhythms.Biomolecules · 2023Article
- Chronotherapeutics for Solid Tumors.Pharmaceutics · 2023Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
10 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundCircadian rhythms are important for all aspects of biology; virtually every aspect of biological function varies according to time of day. Although this is well known, variation across the day is also often ignored in the design and reporting of research. For this review, we analyzed the top 50 cited papers across 10 major domains of the biological sciences in the calendar year 2015. We repeated this analysis for the year 2019, hypothesizing that the awarding of a Nobel Prize in 2017 for achievements in the field of circadian biology would highlight the importance of circadian rhythms for scientists across many disciplines, and improve time-of-day reporting.
resultsOur analyses of these 1000 empirical papers, however, revealed that most failed to include sufficient temporal details when describing experimental methods and that few systematic differences in time-of-day reporting existed between 2015 and 2019. Overall, only 6.1% of reports included time-of-day information about experimental measures and manipulations sufficient to permit replication.
conclusionsCircadian rhythms are a defining feature of biological systems, and knowing when in the circadian day these systems are evaluated is fundamentally important information. Failing to account for time of day hampers reproducibility across laboratories, complicates interpretation of results, and reduces the value of data based predominantly on nocturnal animals when extrapolating to diurnal humans.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
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.