Pineal and its Hormone Melatonin

SF PANG
hrmypsf@hkucc.hku.hk

>>Very fascinating findings! The finding of no cognitive deterioration in melatonin treated AD patients is most exciting.

>>One of your studies lasted 22 to 35 months. Did you observe any undesirable or noticeable side effects in the treated patients?

>>One of the problems of melatonin usage in humans is the lack of long term studies on harmful side effects. In your opinion, how can this problem be alleviated? Do you have any project on related topics?

>>SFPang

>Dear Prof. Pang,
>Thank you for your comments. Indeed we took advantage in this study of the fact that melatonin is, since 4 years ago, registered as a medicament in Argentina. Our first interest was to treat AD patients with sleep disorders and the outcome was that by improving sleep the cognitive decay was impaired.
>There is no formal study on long term effects of melatonin, but on the whole the very unusual lack of side effects is in our experience (for more than 3 years) very compelling.
>>
>
Dear Prof. Cardinali,

Three years (or 35 months) is a very long period. Your study has achieved that. However, I am sure that many investigators would like to have longer studies. How long will be necessary, ten years, twenty years, or fifty years? Prof. Lerner has taken melatonin 40 years ago. To my knowledge, he has stated that there is no apparent side effect.

May be Prof. Arendt, Prof. Brown and others would also like to comment on this.

SF