In animals, the hormone, melatonin, plays an important role as a chemical mediator of the effects of season on behavior. In many instances, changes in the length of the night serve as the environmental signal that triggers seasonal changes in behavior. Melatonin is secreted exclusively at night, and the duration of its secretion varies with seasonal variations in the length of the night. Because of these properties, many organisms use changes in the duration of nocturnal melatonin secretion as a chemical cue to trigger changes in functions, such as breeding, that vary on a seasonal basis. Our recent research (ZO1 MH 02424-01 CPB) showed that humans, in the course of their evolution, have conserved brain mechanisms similar to those that exist in animals that enable them to detect seasonal changes in night-length and modify the duration of nocturnal melatonin secretion. Human responses to change in photoperiod were detected in experimental conditions in which individuals were exposed to long and short artificial """"""""days."""""""" In a subsequent environment (metro Washington, DC area), in which they are routinely exposed to artificial light, are still able to detect seasonal changes in the duration of the night and to respond to these changes by modifying the duration of the nocturnal period of melatonin secretion. We found that patterns of nocturnal melatonin secretion in women responded to seasonal changes in the duration of the night, while those in men did not. This finding suggests that there may be gender differences in responsiveness to artificial light of mechanisms that track seasonal changes in the length of the night. Because of the importance of the duration of nocturnal melatonin secretion as a transducer of the effects of seasonal changes in the length of the night on animal behavior, it would be important to investigate whether melatonin plays a role in the pathogenesis of seasonal affective disorder (SAD) with recurrent winter depression. Accordingly, in this project, we are assessing whether or not the duration of nocturnal melatonin secretion varies on a seasonal basis in women with SAD, as it does in healthy women. Preliminary results with approximately 20 patients and 20 matched controls suggest that melatonin is abnormally unresponsive to change in season in women with SAD. These results raise the possibility that when the pineal gland fails to exhibit a seasonal response that normally occurs in healthy women. During the current year, the number of subjects is being doubled in order to further evaluate this unexpected and potentially important finding.
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| Schwartz, P J; Rosenthal, N E; Kajimura, N et al. (2000) Ultradian oscillations in cranial thermoregulation and electroencephalographic slow-wave activity during sleep are abnormal in humans with annual winter depression. Brain Res 866:152-67 |
