Lévy, LaurentRobine, Jean-MarieRey, GrégoireMéndez Turrubiates, Raúl FernandoQuijal-Zamorano, MarcosAchebak, HichamBallester, JoanRodó, XavierHerrmann, François R.2023-01-102023-01-102022Lévy L, Robine JM, Rey G, Méndez Turrubiates RF, Quijal-Zamorano M, Achebak H, Ballester J, Rodó X, Herrmann FR. Daylight saving time affects European mortality patterns. Nat Commun. 2022 Nov 14;13(1):6906. DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-34704-92041-1723http://hdl.handle.net/10230/55242Daylight saving time (DST) consists in a one-hour advancement of legal time in spring offset by a backward transition of the same magnitude in fall. It creates a minimal circadian misalignment that could disrupt sleep and homoeostasis in susceptible individuals and lead to an increased incidence of pathologies and accidents during the weeks immediately following both transitions. How this shift affects mortality dynamics on a large population scale remains, however, unknown. This study examines the impact of DST on all-cause mortality in 16 European countries for the period 1998-2012. It shows that mortality decreases in spring and increases in fall during the first two weeks following each DST transition. Moreover, the alignment of time data around DST transition dates revealed a septadian mortality pattern (lowest on Sundays, highest on Mondays) that persists all-year round, irrespective of seasonal variations, in men and women aged above 40.application/pdfeng© The Author(s) 2022. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.info:eu-repo/semantics/articlehttp://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-34704-9EpidemiologySocietyinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess