Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
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Query: UMLS:C0025362 (mental retardation)
 15,878 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

A group of Vancouver health professionals, including the authors, have studied the use of oral melatonin in the treatment of chronic sleep disorders in children with disabilities since the Fall of 1991. This review article is based on the first 100 patients, half of whom were visually impaired or blind. Children with neurological, neuropsychiatric, and developmental disabilities are predisposed to chronic sleep-wake cycle disturbances. Disorders such as blindness, deaf-blindness, mental retardation, autism, and central nervous system diseases, among others, diminish the ability of these individuals to perceive and interpret the multitude of cues for synchronizing their sleep with the environment. Melatonin, which benefitted slightly over 80% of our patients, appears to be a safe, inexpensive, and a very effective treatment of sleep-wake cycle disorders. The oral dose of fast release melatonin taken at bed-time ranged from 2.5 mg to 10 mg. Side effects or the development of tolerance have not been observed. Since the causes of sleep difficulties are extremely variable, not all children are candidates for treatment. For successful melatonin treatment, clinical experience is required, and the influences of other health problems and medications need to be considered. Further clinical and laboratory research in this field is imperative because melatonin treatment offers enormous health, emotional, social, and economic benefits to society, especially since multidisabled children with chronic sleep difficulties do not respond well to current therapeutic regimes.
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PMID:Use of melatonin in the treatment of paediatric sleep disorders. 898 17

Sleep disorders are common in children with mental retardation and neurologic disorders. Melatonin, a recently developed natural compound, has been used successfully in sleep disorders. I report my experience with melatonin in an open, prospective trial to treat circadian rhythm sleep disorder in handicapped children. The sleep disorder had been present for at least 6 months and had not responded to at least one hypnotic drug. The therapeutic response was recorded according to the average number of hours asleep per 24 hours, average number of awakening per night, average number of nights with delayed sleep onset, and average number of nights with early morning arousals. Ten consecutive children (four males, six females; age range = 1-11 years, mean 5.4) were included. Nine children had documented mental retardation that was severe in six (67%). Most had epilepsy and visual impairment (70%). All children were monitored for 4-12 months (mean 7.5 months) after the initiation of 3-mg bedtime melatonin. Most (80%) had a dramatic response to melatonin. No side effects were reported. Melatonin is a well-tolerated, safe, relatively inexpensive, and effective drug, with minimal side effects, for the treatment of severe circadian rhythm sleep disorder in handicapped children. Wider use of this drug is recommended.
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PMID:Melatonin for the treatment of handicapped children with severe sleep disorders. 1103 85

The aim of the present study was to verify the clinical efficacy of melatonin (MLT) in children, adolescents and young adults with wake-sleep disorder and mental retardation, most of them on chronic anticonvulsant therapy for epileptic seizures, by means of a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled cross-over trial. Twenty-five patients (16 males, nine females), aged from 3.6 to 26 years (mean 10.5 years), all affected with mental retardation mostly with epileptic seizures, were randomized to oral synthetic fast-release MLT or placebo. Melatonin was initiated at the daily dose of 3 mg, at nocturnal bedtime. In case of inefficacy, MLT dose could be titrated up to 9 mg the following 2 weeks at increments of 3 mg/week, unless the patient was unable to tolerate it. The analysis of all the sleep logs disclosed a significant treatment effect of melatonin on sleep latency (P = 0.019). Melatonin was well tolerated in all patients and no side effects were reported. In conclusion, our study supports the efficacy of MLT in young patients with mental disabilities and epileptic seizures in improving the wake-sleep disorders such as time to fall asleep. Overall, MLT appeared to influence the seizure frequency poorly, though there may be occasional seizure worsening or improving. Such a dual effect requires further studies in young epileptic patients.
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PMID:Melatonin in wake-sleep disorders in children, adolescents and young adults with mental retardation with or without epilepsy: a double-blind, cross-over, placebo-controlled trial. 1527 98

While prolonged sleep deprivation (SD) could lead to profound negative health consequences, such as impairments in vital biological functions of immunity and cognition, melatonin possesses powerful ameliorating effects against those harmful insults. Melatonin has strong antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects that help to restore body's immune and cognitive functions. In this study, we investigated the possible role of melatonin in reversing cognitive dysfunction induced by SD in rats. Our experimental results revealed that sleep-deprived animals exhibited spatial memory impairment in the Morris water maze tasks compared with the control groups. Furthermore, there was an increased glial activation most prominent in the hippocampal region of the SD group compared to the normal control (NC) group. Additionally, markers of oxidative stress such as 4-hydroxynonenal (4-HNE) and 7,8-dihydro-8-oxo-deoxyguanine (8-oxo-dG) were significantly increased, while fragile X-mental retardation protein (FMRP) expression was decreased in the SD group. Interestingly, melatonin treatment normalized these events to control levels following SD. Our data demonstrate that SD induces oxidative stress through glial activation and decreases FMRP expression in the neurons. Furthermore, our results suggest the efficacy of melatonin for the treatment of sleep-related neuronal dysfunction, which occurs in neurological disorders such as Alzheimer's disease and autism.
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PMID:The potential role of melatonin on sleep deprivation-induced cognitive impairments: implication of FMRP on cognitive function. 2604 24

Perinatal hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy (HIE) affects one to three per 1,000 live full-term births and can lead to severe and permanent neuropsychological sequelae, such as cerebral palsy, epilepsy, mental retardation, and visual motor or visual perceptive dysfunction. Melatonin has begun to be contemplated as a good choice in order to diminish the neurological sequelae from hypoxic-ischemic brain injury. Melatonin emerges as a very interesting medication, because of its capacity to cross all physiological barriers extending to subcellular compartments and its safety and effectiveness. The purpose of this commentary is to detail the evidence on the use of melatonin as a neuroprotection agent. The pharmacologic aspects of the drug as well as its potential neuroprotective characteristics in human and animal studies are described in this study. Melatonin seems to be safe and beneficial in protecting neonatal brains from perinatal HIE. Larger randomized controlled trials in humans are required, to implement a long-awaited feasible treatment in order to avoid the dreaded sequelae of HIE.
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PMID:Melatonin in the management of perinatal hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy: light at the end of the tunnel? 2772 91