would you give your child melatonin??? (piog)

what melatonin is A naturally occurring hormone associated with sleep. Synthetic forms of melatonin are sold as sleep aids,


the research

The researchers identified all children with sleep disturbances in a large paediatric neurology clinic and offered them melatonin to treat the condition. 49 mothers agreed to give their children melatonin and keep diaries and records of the differences it made to their children's sleep patterns. The children were given 2.5mg of melatonin per night if they were under five years of age and 5mg if they were over five. The dose was increased, if necessary, to a maximum of 7.5mg in children under two years and 10mg over this age. The children with sleep problems also had either cerebral palsy, learning difficulties, epilepsy, autistic spectrum disorders or Down syndrome. Only seven children were also visually impaired.

They found that the melatonin significantly improved almost all aspects of sleep in most of the children and around 93% recorded significant benefits. The average number of hours sleep that the children had each week increased by around 10%, from 54 hours/week before taking the melatonin to 66 hours/week while taking the melatonin. The number of interruptions to sleep each week decreased by 50% from an average of seven interruptions per week before taking the melatonin, to 3.5 interruptions while taking the drug. Also, the number of hours of interrupted sleep decreased by 45%, from nine hours awake each week during a sleep interruption pre melatonin, to five hours per week while taking melatonin.

There were no major side effects from the medication in any of the children and importantly there was no change in the frequency or severity of seizures in children with epilepsy. Boys and girls were equally likely to respond well to melatonin. The visually impaired children were the most likely to have success with melatonin, but around three-quarters of the fully sighted children also responded very well.

Comments:

This is further support for the effectiveness and safety of melatonin in children with sleep problems, particularly in children with neurological problems. An impressive 93% of children responded positively. However the medical community still requires supporting evidence in the form of a randomised clinical trial before we can uniformly recommend melatonin for this purpose.

Reference:

Ross & Whitehouse. Melatonin treatment for sleep disorders in children with neurodevelopmental disorders: an observational study. Developmental Medicine & Child Neurology May 2002; 44: 339-44.

Action Points:

* Sleep disturbance is common in children with cerebral palsy, learning difficulties, intellectual disability, visual disability, autism and epilepsy. Melatonin at a dose of 2.5-10mg is a safe and probably effective treatment for sleep disturbance in these children.

Reproduced with permission of ChildHealthMonitor.org, which translates pediatric journal articles into everyday language providing comprehensive information on research breakthroughs ranging from general nutrition to rare diseases. A great resource for busy Pediatricians and also for parents who want to learn how best to care for their children's medical and parenting problems.