Table 3.

The saliva DLMO across age groups using individual data sets from the literature

	0–9 years	10–19 years	20–29 years	30–39 years	40–49 years	50–59 years	60–69 years	70–79 years	80–89 years
DLMO (h)	19.85 ± 0.97 h	22.48 ± 1.92 h	21.65 ± 1.56 h	21.45 ± 1.46 h	21.18 ± 1.37 h	20.84 ± 1.67 h	21.09 ± 1.29 h	20.31 ± 1.22 h	21.88 ± 2.18 h
Upper 95% CI	21.79 h	02.32 h	00.77 h	00.37 h	23.92 h	24.18 h	23.67 h	22.75 h	02.24 h
Lower 95% CI	17.91 h	18.64 h	18.53 h	18.53 h	18.44 h	17.50 h	18.51 h	17.87 h	17.52 h
n	75	713	698	117	44	36	42	21	3

The data are the means ± 1 SD for controls bundled into 10-year age groups from the shared data sets. Also shown are the upper and lower 95% confidence intervals. n = the total number of participants in each age bracket. Analysis of variance comparing the 10-year age bands from 0–9 to 70–79 years revealed a significant between groups difference (p < 0.001). The 80–89 year group was omitted from the analysis because of a very small number of participants. Post hoc analysis (Tukey HSD) indicated the DLMO for 0–9 year-olds was earlier than the 10–19, 20–29, 30–39, 40–49, and 60–69-year-old groups (p < 0.004). The DLMO for the 10–19 year-olds was later than all the other age groups (p < 0.001). The DLMO for the 20–29-year-old group was later than the 70–79 year-olds (p = 0.008).