Potential Modulation of the Efferent Activities of Visceral Primary Afferent Neurons Following Cutaneous UVB Exposure

I was going to mention that the more general implication of those articles discussing the anatomical convergence or near-convergence of the central terminals of visceral and somatic primary afferent neurons is that, under the "best" (or worst, if one assumes that UVB has no place in the biology of life on Earth) of circumstances (outside of a disease state), UVB could augment efferent activity in primary afferent neurons innervating visceral sites and influence large numbers of physiological processes that way. For example, the bone marrow, arteries, heart, liver, lymph nodes, etc. are innervated by primary afferent neurons. Maybe there would be some site-specificity to the effects (meaning that one dermatomal region could influence CGRP release at some visceral sites but not others), but I don't know that that would necessarily be the case. One implication is that, in all of the research looking at 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels in relation to atherosclerosis, the 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels could be a surrogate marker. The changes in visceral neuropeptide release, such as one might, in theory, expect to see in response to UVB exposure, could be influencing the phenotypes and degranulation "patterns" of perivascular mast cells and influencing atherosclerosis by those mechanisms. It could be that neurogenic inflammation is not suppressed in any generalized way by UVB but that it's "refined" or "recoupled" to specific stimuli, so that there's not this constant, low-level "waste" of ongoing, endless mast cell degranulation or piecemeal degranulation (that may contribute to atherosclerosis). I'm not saying these suggestions necessarily have any basis in fact or reality, at this point, and I'm not trying to say that UVB can influence everything in some fundamental way. I'm just throwing out thoughts that follow from some of the mechanisms discovered by researchers. I'm not a scientist, and I don't have any kind of over-inflated sense of the importance of things I talk about in a blog, etc. Nothing I do is going to be of any importance or significance. It's not that there's anything fundamentally more important about these mechanisms than there is about more thoroughly-established mechanisms. It's just meant to be an exploration of possible consequences of these mechanisms, should they be shown to occur in humans. I'd urge anyone to discuss all of these issues with one's doctor before doing anything, and I'm not suggesting that anyone should do anything at all.