Teele Palumaa MD, DPhil spearheads research on myopia
Which chronotype are you: a night owl or a morning lark?
The difference has implications that extend well beyond your ability to stay up until the wee hours of the morning. Your chronotype could shed light on your vision health.
Emory Eye Center post-doctoral researcher Teele Palumaa, MD, DPhil has recently received a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship that will allow her more thoroughly explore this connection. Over the next two years, she will map out the relationship between circadian rhythms – the biological mechanism that regulates the daily rhythmicity in our physiology – and myopia. One of those rhythms is our sleep cycle, the pattern of awake/asleep time that defines us as a night person or a morning person. Palumaa will use this chronotype information as a part of her inquiry.
Ultimately, she hopes to better understand the molecular mechanisms that lead to myopia by studying mouse models and human genetics.
“Published research over the last several years has suggested a link between myopia, circadian rhythms and sleep, but there are many questions that need to be answered,” Palumaa observed.
“First, it is unclear to what extent circadian rhythm disruptions impact refractive development. Second, it is uncertain whether the development of refractive errors results in alterations in circadian rhythms. Third, there is no in-depth understanding of the molecular processes triggered by lens-induced myopia in the mouse retina and how these align with the mechanisms associated with human myopia. “
At Emory, Palumaa will work alongside Emory Eye Center researcher Machelle T. Pardue, PhD, where she will employ the mouse model of myopia to better understand the causality of the relationship between chronotype and myopia. At the same time, she will analyze the underlying molecular mechanisms of myopia.
During the third year of this study, Palumaa will return to her native Estonia, where she will use data collected through the Estonian Biobank, a database and research resource containing de-identified information on the genetic, lifestyle, and health of more than 200,000 individuals.
“The mechanisms that underlie this phenomenon, remain unknown, and that’s what I am trying to define,” she said. “For instance, if a subject develops myopia, will that trigger a concurrent change in their chronotype? Or does a particular chronotype predispose an individual to developing myopia?”
Prior to joining the Pardue Research Group last year, Palumaa completed her medical degree in Estonia and then earned a doctoral degree at the University of Oxford. It was at Oxford where she began researching the circadian rhythms of the retina in the eye. After that, she returned to Estonia to start ophthalmology residency training and conduct research at the Estonian Biobank, where she made a connection between evening chronotypes (“night owls”) and myopia. Previously, this had only been noted in a couple of smaller studies.
“A better understanding of the mechanisms can open avenues for further potential therapeutics,” she said. “With the growing prevalence of this disease, that’s an important direction for our research to pursue.”
--Kathleen E. Moore