Does chronic disruption of the light/dark cycle alter the inflammatory response of the brain to experimental stroke?

The ways in which we are exposed to patterns of light and dark is emerging as potentially harmful to health. Internal daily rhythms are normally aligned with light/dark cycles but we are increasingly exposed to light and dark in a more erratic manner through patterns of living and working, e.g. shift work. When internal daily rhythms become misaligned with the light/dark cycle this can be bad for health. For example, shift workers suffer metabolic changes which are linked to stroke. In this project we will examine the effects of rhythm misalignment on the brain damage after experimentally-induced stroke in rats.