NEXT time you jet off somewhere exotic, leave those 鈥渁nti-jetlag鈥� melatonin pills at home. They鈥檙e useless, concludes a review of melatonin research papers.
Nina Buscemi and colleagues at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, reviewed 15 major papers on the hormone, which is thought to alter sleeping patterns by changing the body鈥檚 circadian rhythms.
Pooling the results, the team found no evidence that the hormone helps people get to sleep sooner, whatever the cause of their sleeplessness. At best, it added 10 extra minutes of sleep for every 8 hours in bed (British Medical Journal, DOI: 10.1136/bmj.38731532766.F6).
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Other melatonin researchers say it does work. 鈥淒on鈥檛 knock it,鈥� says Jo Arendt, of the Surrey Sleep Research Centre in Guildford, UK. She says that some studies are negative because subjects were not instructed to take melatonin at the correct time.
Buscemi鈥檚 team didn鈥檛 look at whether the hormone helps travellers and shift workers stay awake, which is supported by at least two studies not included in the analysis. The analysis concludes that melatonin is safe, although it didn鈥檛 evaluate the effects of taking the hormone regularly for more than three months.
