Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of UVR at birth and its relationship to lifespan and determine whether there are significant differential effects on sex and race. We test if variation in UVR, as determined by solar cycles (long-term variation), is related to survival as measured by age at death. Methods: The data used 78 million death records from the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) from 1979 to 2013 with accidents, suicides, and war casualties deleted resulted in ~63 million records. Records of persons <= 47 years old were also scrubbed because we could not show an effect on lifespan based upon the intensity of solar energy as reflected by sunspot number (SSN). This we hypothesize is due to the protective effect of the hormones associated with growth and reproduction. Also selected were persons afflicted with multiple sclerosis (MS). Results: Males of all races born with a UVR intensity as estimated by sunspot number (SSN) <= 90 had an average lifespan of 74.4 years, for females of all races, 78.1 years; males born with >90 had an average lifespan of 66.3 years, for females of all races, 70.2 years, resulting in a lifespan decrease of 8.1 years for males and 8.5 years for females. For African-American males born <= 90 SSN, 70.8 years and for >90 SSN, 62.5 years, an 8.3-year decrease; similarly, for African-American females <= 90 SSN, 75.0, for >90 SSN, 65.4 years, a 9.6-year decrease. Higher solar energy at birth had an adverse effect on human lifespan. We also found that there were twice as many persons with MS born in >80-90 SSN as in the general population. Conclusions: There is a statistically significant inverse relationship between exposure to solar energy at birth and average human lifespan. Solar energy by some mechanism alters the epigenome at birth, but the effect of higher solar energy becomes apparent after the age of natural selection.

INTRODUCTION

Many epidemiological studies have reported that some diseases affecting lifespan occur with higher incidence in persons born in certain months, referred to as seasonality,suggesting an environmental factor is operating during gestation. A seasonal pattern has been observed for schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and some autoimmune diseases like diabetes type 1, regional ileitis, myositis, celiac disease, multiple sclerosis (MS) among others, all, especially MS, likely dependent on genetic, infectious and latitude variations. (1-3) These results regarding seasonality support the notion that UVR is instrumental in modifying the human genome not only by overt mutation, but also by epigenetic mechanisms. (4, 5) The epigenome is important as it enables an organism to modify its genetic library to match current environmental conditions and therefore to maximize survival. Our research group has previously reported that human lifespan is associated with solar cycles at birth during which electromagnetic radiation varies in approximately 11-year cycles. We found that those born, and likely conceived, during the three peak years of solar cycles (the MAX) lived, on average, 1.7 years less than those born in the eight non-peak years (the MIN).(6) Others have reported that electromagnetic storm periodicities are mirrored by rhythms in human physiology.(7) The exact mechanism how solar radiation affects the genome and epigenome is the subject of much research.(8) Environmental effects occurring even at conception and early gestation may predispose humans to adult disease.(9-11) In our previously reported research we found that metabolic diseases were suppressed at solar peaks relative to non-peaks, a finding that was opposite of what we found for major mental illness.(12, 13).