Comment · Sun, December 29, 2013 · Ceretropic
Are circa 1mg doses of melatonin too wimpy to protect/enhance brain mitochondria?
Original post in this thread
alan2102 · 21 points
"Both in vitro and in vivo, melatonin was effective to prevent
oxidative stress/nitrosative stress-induced mitochondrial
dysfunction seen in experimental models of AD, PD and HD.
These effects are seen at doses 2-3 orders of magnitude higher
than those required to affect sleep and circadian rhythms....
clinical trials employing melatonin in the range of
50-100mg/day are needed to assess its therapeutic validity in
neurodegenerative disorders."
Or, for prevention in (presumably) healthy people, maybe just 5-10 mg/day?
Just a crazy unjustified wild-ass guess.
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http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22391273
Horm Behav. 2012 Feb 25.
Melatonin and mitochondrial dysfunction in the central nervous
system.
Cardinali DP, Pagano ES, Scacchi Bernasconi PA, Reynoso R,
Scacchi P.
Cell death and survival are critical events for
neurodegeneration, mitochondria being increasingly seen as
important determinants of both. Mitochondrial dysfunction is
considered a major causative factor in Alzheimer's disease
(AD), Parkinson's disease (PD) and Huntington's disease (HD).
Increased free radical generation, enhanced mitochondrial
inducible nitric oxide (NO) synthase activity a…
What they were answering
Direct reply to the original post — see the thread post above.
u/MisterYouAreSoDumb · Ceretropic
There have been studies trying to figure that out. Their findings show that doses of 2mg/day (1mg twice daily) lowered malondialdehyde levels in humans by 50%.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19168264
>Melatonin pills (2 1 mg, Adipharm, Bulgaria) were adminis-
tered as a supplementary therapy once a day before night sleep for
a period of 3 months. The MDA levels were examined before the
melatonin treatment (the 0th month) and at the end of the 1st, 2nd
and 3rd month of the supplementary melatonin therapy. Two
parallel samples of venous blood were drawn from each patient
before the HD session. The plasma was obtained by centrifugation
of the blood at 2000 g for 20 min at 20 C, and was assayed
immediately for MDA.
>Before the administration of melatonin (0th month), the MDA
levels (5.47 1.99 mmol/L) were almost 50% higher compared to the
control values (2.68 0.44 mmol/L) (Chart 1). The supplementary
treatment with melatonin in a dose of 2 mg/day led to a consider-
able time-dependent reduction of the MDA levels.