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From: Ken Bernstein, internet alias: [log in to unmask] Young Parkinson's Network, Massachusetts Perhaps some of you read the article carried by the AP on Tuesday that cited Dr. Richard Wurtman's MIT study that suggests the natural hormone melatonin promotes sleep. I have communicated with Dr. Wurtman before as he is quite interested in Parkinson's, I asked him a few questions. I am enclosing his replies below as I think they are quite important to the Parkinson's community. -------- 1) Do NOT purchase melatonin from health-food stores and self-medicate with it: It is impure; it's the wrong dosage; and its interactions with the abnormalities and treatments for Parkinson's disease have yet to be studied. 2) Tell your friends to be patient; it should be a bona fide drug before too long. 3) I would like to study melatonin's effects in people with Parkinson's, both those with and without insomnia, but perhaps not before 1995. Richard J. Wurtman, M. D. ASSOCIATED PRESS March 1, 1994 The Boston Globe WASHINGTON - In research hinting at a new weapon against insomnia, researchers find that pills of the natural hormone melatonin will bring on slumber quickly without the addictive effects of drugs. Dr. Richard J. Wurtman, professor of neuroscience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said yesterday that the studies show melatonin, secreted by the pineal gland in the brain, functions naturally as a sleep-inducing hormone, even when given as pills in very small doses. "Our volunteers fall asleep in five or six minutes on melatonin, while those on placebo take about 15 minutes or longer," Wurtman said. A report on a study of melatonin is to be published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Dr. Judith L. Vaitukaitis, director of the National Center for Research Resources, said the MIT findings offer hope "for a natural, nonaddictive agent that could improve sleep for millions of Americans." Though the research is encouraging, Wurtman cautioned that the wrong doses of melatenin could cause mood-altering side-effects. Melatonin is sold in some health food stores, but the sale of the hormone is not controlled and its purity a strength often are uncertain, he said. "People I should not self-medicate with melatonin," Wurtman said. In the MIT studies, 20 young men volunteers were given various doses of melatonin or placebo and then placed in a dark room at midday and then to close their eyes for 30 minutes. Subjects melatonin tended to sleep about twice as long those on placebo, Wurtman said. Wurtman said the study was "simply the first step" in proving the use of melatonin for sleep, but he predicted a formal application for that use of the hormone within a year. end AP article....