What is chronotherapy?

Chronotherapy involves the delivery of medications according to endogenous biological rhythms, with a main consideration for circadian rhythms.

Chronotherapy aims at jointly improving treatment tolerability and efficacy against the main causes of human mortality, including cancer, cardio-vascular, metabolic, inflammatory, infectious, neurodegenerative or psychiatric diseases.

Chronotherapy also consists of non drug-related circadian interventions aiming at improving patient outcomes or disease prevention through targeting the circadian timing system for enhancing its coordination and its adjustment to environmental cycles.

Body clocks

The circadian rhythms is a type of body clock. This particualr body clock displays on about 24 hour period. They are generated in most cells by genetic clocks which are constituted of interwoven transcription/post transcription regulatory loops involving 15 genes.

The molecular clocks are coordinated by the suprachiasmatic nuclei in the hypothalamus, which generates an array of circadian rhythms in physiology, including rest-activity, body temperature, feeding pattern, and hormonal secretions.

Humans, like all mammals, hare an circadian timing system, which rhythmically controls many biological functions such as xenobiotic metabolism, DNA repair, cell cycle and apoptosis along the 24 hour time scale. This system also adjusts the molecular, cellular and physiology rhythms to the environmental cycles.