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Image of the sun in the background and a plane in the foreground, depicting solor jet lag. Image credit: Pexels.
April 8, 2026

Does solar jet lag contribute to liver cancer?

Just as traveling from time zone to time zone can cause sleep disturbances, fuzzy thinking and overall discombobulation, solar jet lag can also result in negative health effects including, potentially, an increased risk for liver cancer.
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Faculty Research

Liver cancers are commonly thought to be driven by heavy alcohol use or chronic hepatitis B or C virus infection. But a new grant, awarded to Fred Hutch Cancer Center epidemiologist Trang VoPham, will investigate whether the most common form of liver cancer ― hepatocellular carcinoma, or HCC ― is also driven by something completely unrelated to alcohol use or viral infection: a disruption in circadian rhythms.

Solar jet lag is a specific type of circadian disruption (i.e., circadian misalignment) caused by differences in the timing of a person’s exposure to light. In short, it is when your internal clock, or circadian rhythm, is misaligned with the sun’s clock.

This American Cancer Society Research Scholar Grant of nearly $1 million is the first-ever epidemiologic study of solar jet lag exposure and HCC risk in the world.

Department of Medicine co-investigators are Drs. George Ioannou, professor, Nicole Kim, assistant professor and Philip Vutien, assistant professor (Gastroenterology).

Read the full article by Hutch news