Potencial terapêutico do hormônio melatonina no distúrbio da insônia: uma revisão.

Abstract

Sleep is an extremely important physiological process, which is involved in the physical, mental, cognitive, attention, occupational, memory and social functioning of the population. The deprivation or poor quality of sleep can cause several disorders, the most common being insomnia, which is characterized by non-restorative and insufficient sleep, affecting the daily functions. Several pharmacological classes are used for the treatment of sleep disorders, however, these cause several adverse effects, as well as dependence on them. Thus, melatonin emerges as an alternative widely used in the treatment of sleep disorders, being a hormone secreted by the pineal gland, acting as a sleep maintenance mechanism, improving its quality. Thus, the present study aimed to investigate the effects of the use of melatonin and its relationship with sleep disorders. This work is an integrative literature review, whose search for the material occurred in scientific databases Virtual Health Library (VHL), Pubmed, ScienceDirect, Google Academic, Scientific Electronic Library Online (Scielo), Lilacs, Scopus, Medline, Web of Science and Periódicos Capes. Key-word combinations were used in English, Portuguese and Spanish, with the choice of articles that met the pre-defined inclusion criteria. The search in the databases resulted in 183 researched articles, after being filtered by the inclusion and exclusion criteria, 11 scientific articles were selected for the analysis of the use of melatonin in patients with different clinical conditions. Therefore, the 11 selected studies were papers published between the years 2012 to 2021, which used from 2 mg to 10 mg of melatonin, in periods of time ranging from 3 to 12 weeks, in patients with quadriplegia, cancer and other diseases, besides healthy patients. Thus, the positive effects of melatonin outweigh the negative effects, highlighting the effectiveness of this hormone, since it showed other effects besides improving sleep. Melatonin shows great therapeutic potential, especially related to sleep disorders, but more research is needed, since most studies are related to the short-term use of melatonin.