Of Dreams and Diabetes

piggy submitted, created time 4 weeks 1 hour (sciencenow.sciencemag.org)

Is there a link between sleep and type 2 diabetes? That's one implication of a new study, which has found that variants in a gene that helps regulate the body's daily rhythms increase the chance of developing the disease. The find, reported online yesterday in three papers in Nature Genetics, may suggest new ways to treat or prevent the ever more common disorder.

The body's internal clock--which controls the circadian rhythm--is kept accurate by a hormone called melatonin, whose levels fall during the day and rise at night

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Clock-gene variants linked to diabetes

sea-maid submitted, created time 4 weeks 2 days (www.nature.com)

Fresh evidence suggests that melatonin, a hormone that regulates the body's biological clock, is associated with type 2 diabetes.

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Drug Insight: the use of melatonergic agonists for the treatment of insomnia—focus on ramelteon

Luneetty submitted, created time 1 year 8 months (www.nature.com)

Melatonin, a chronobiotic that participates in the control of the circadian system, is known for its sleep-promoting effects, which include shortening of sleep latency and lengthening of sleep duration. There has been an active search for patentable melatonin receptor ligands in recent years.Ramelteon has been shown to induce sleep initiation and maintenance in various animal models and in clinical trials. In chronic insomnia, ramelteon decreases sleep latency and increases total sleep time and sleep efficiency, without causing hangover, addiction or withdrawal effects

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Rhythmic control of AANAT translation by hnRNP Q in circadian melatonin production

badboy submitted, created time 1 year 9 months (www.genesdev.org)

"The circadian rhythm of pineal melatonin requires the nocturnal increment of serotonin N-acetyltransferase (arylalkylamine N-acetyltransferase [AANAT]) protein. To date, only limited information is available in the critical issue of how AANAT protein expression is up-regulated exclusively at night regardless of its species-specific mRNA profiles."

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Melatonin May Suppress Hippocampus

biscuits submitted, created time 1 year 9 months (www.arcmedres.com)

Study from Anhui Medical University indicate that melatonin inhibited expressions of proinflammatory factors, which may contribute to improvement of learning and memory function in AD.

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Television poses more risk to childrens' health than previous thought

sunshine submitted, created time 1 year 10 months (physorg.com)

It found that watching television inhibits the production of the hormone melatonin, which affects the immune system, sleep cycle and the onset of puberty.

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