Care should be taken with medications, hormone supplements, or hormones that are given with dietary supplement coverage, says researcher
AGÊNCIA FAPESP – Article published in the magazine Microorganisms proves that the melatonindespite its antioxidant and regulating effect on sleepcan do the intestinal inflammationdepending on the set of bacteria that live in the human body, in particular in the host’s intestine, i.e. the microbiota, previously called “intestinal flora”.
Melatonin is popularly known as the “sleep hormone”. It has been quite common for people, without a prescription and not directly monitored, to use melatonin for better sleep. “The fact of the matter is that everyone thinks it’s harmless, that a hormone like melatonin doesn’t do anything bad, it just improves sleep, and what we’re demonstrating is that people need to be alert and alert, because hormonal supplementation it can improve sleep, but something else can make it worse,” says Cristina Ribeiro de Barros Cardoso, professor of immunology and neuroimmunoendocrinology at the Ribeirão Preto Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of São Paulo (FCFRP-USP).
Cristina Cardoso’s laboratory works with inflammatory bowel diseases, including Crohn’s disease AND Ulcerative colitis. They are immune-mediated conditions, i.e. dependent on an uncontrolled immune response that ends up causing destruction in the gastrointestinal tract and very strong clinical effects, such as abdominal pain, constant diarrhea, bleeding and a lot of tiredness.
Treatment depends on the suppression or inhibition of immunity. It must be decreased to reduce the excessive inflammation that causes damage to the intestine. In addition to corticoids and immunosuppressants, there are treatments with immunobiological drugs that are more effective for moderate and severe cases, but at a very high cost and, therefore, more difficult to access for the population, being supplied only under certain conditions by the Unified Health System (SUS) or from private settlements through lawsuits.
“What our laboratory is doing is better understanding these diseases and proposing new, more accessible treatments,” explains Cristina Cardoso, who holds a dental degree from the Federal University of Uberlândia and a doctorate in basic and applied immunology from the ‘USP, with a postdoctoral internship at the Forsyth Institute, affiliated with the Harvard School for Dental Medicine (USA).
In addition to the question of financial access, the researcher points out that many patients do not respond adequately to even the most modern and expensive treatments, which require surgery to remove parts of the intestine. These are rather invasive procedures for patients, with direct consequences on their quality of life. “So in recent years we have been looking for new therapeutic options, mainly based on the modulation or regulation of immune responses.”
With years of experience in hormone research, melatonin has become the research focus of the research group. “Look, I’m by no means saying that melatonin has no beneficial effects, on the contrary, and there are few studies or reports of negative side effects,” he cautions. Melatonin can act as an antioxidant and improve various physiological or pathological conditions. “So we started this work imagining that we would have a potential new treatment for Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, but, to our surprise, what we saw was just the opposite. And this caveat must be given.”
After an experimentally induced intestinal disease in mice, when they were treated with melatonin, instead of improving, they got worse. “Because of this work with lab animals — importantly, it wasn’t with human patients, it was with mice — the intestinal inflammation gets worse and worse.”
“From there, we started trying to understand the reasons for the worsening. And what we saw is that if we take the microbiota out of context, if we do a broad-spectrum treatment with antibiotics in these mice, killing all these bacteria, the melatonin starts to have a positive effect on the disease”. That is, the negative effect of melatonin depends on the bacteria that live in the intestines and which are also linked to inflammatory bowel disease. Certain configurations of the microbiota cause melatonin treatment to increase inflammatory parameters and lead the immune system down an even more unregulated pathway, which intensifies damage to the gastrointestinal tract.
“What is the message of all this? ‘food supplement’ thinking that it is not a medicine, that it will not change your body at all, that it will only do you good because, after all, it is sold as a food supplement, when in reality it is not exactly that “, warns Cristina Cardoso. “It’s a hormone, and like other hormones in our bodies, there is very fine regulation of the interaction between these hormones and immunity.”
Regulation
Not long ago, the National Health Surveillance Agency (Anvisa) updated information and rules on the use of melatonin as a food supplement, but even so the control is not the same as that carried out for medicines, which is stricter. «It is important to point this out, because we say that you have to be careful, but then people might think ‘ah, but I go to the pharmacy and buy freely, Anvisa has authorized it’. Yes, but he licensed it under the name of a dietary supplement and so the question we’re asking with this work now is: Is it really just a dietary supplement? Is it really safe?”
The study is one of the results of a project coordinated by Cristina Cardoso and funded by FAPESP. It is also signed by Jefferson Luiz da Silva, Lia Vezenfard Barbosa, Camila Figueiredo Pinzan, Viviani Nardini, Irislene Simões Brigo, Cássia Aparecida Sebastião, Jefferson Elias-Oliveira, Vânia Brazão, José Clóvis do Prado Júnior and Daniela Carlos, scientists working in the Department of Clinical Analysis, Toxicology and Food Sciences at FCFRP and Department of Biochemistry and Immunology at the USP Faculty of Medicine in Ribeirão Preto.
The article The pejorative microbiota-dependent effects of melatonin on intestinal inflammation can be read at: www.mdpi.com/2076-2607/11/2/460.
Source: Terra
Ben Stock is a lifestyle journalist and author at Gossipify. He writes about topics such as health, wellness, travel, food and home decor. He provides practical advice and inspiration to improve well-being, keeps readers up to date with latest lifestyle news and trends, known for his engaging writing style, in-depth analysis and unique perspectives.
