Get ready to spring forward – one day later.
This year Daylight Saving Time (DST) returns on March 10th instead of March 9th, because of the extra day that leap year adds to the end of the shortest month, February. The name, Daylight Saving Time (frequently and wrongly referred to as Daylight Savings Time, as if it were a piggy bank that stored minutes and hours), is used because it “saves” an hour of daylight, shifting that hour from morning to evening.
If that is cold comfort to you like it is to us, rest assured (and rest is decidedly not assured because of the lost hour of sleep) we’re in the majority. A recent YouGov poll found that 64% of Americans want to permanently abolish DST, citing tiredness from disruption to daily routines. However, in what might be called a real DST up, Republicans in Congress introduced a bill called the Sunshine Protection Act to make daylight saving time the new, permanent standard time, but apparently because of partisan voting and disagreement, which, sadly, is par for the course in Washington DC, it failed to advance.
The only two states who don’t observe DST are Hawaii and Arizona because they already see so much sun.
The person credited – or perhaps discredited is a better word – for having ‘invented’ DST is an entomologist from New Zealand named George Hudson (1867-1946), shown below, who wanted more sunshine to hunt for native insects. So, now you can say that DST really, really ‘bugs’ you, and mean it quite literally.
The circadian disruption wrought by DST is possibly more than a mere annoyance, however, given the several health and health-related issues or -itises including heart attacks, strokes, depression, miscarriage, immune colitis, workplace injuries and fatal car accidents that are closely associated with the time change.
Which brings us to the EpicentRx lead small molecule, RRx-001 (nibrozetone).
RRx-001 already has a full dance card of clinical trials planned for a host of indications that end in -itis (this suffix denotes disease or inflammation) – mucositis, esophagitis, peritonitis, enteritis etc. – but we could always arrange to have it tackle one more, starting on March 10th – DST-itis.