Am J Psychiatry 1985; 142:811-816
Copyright © 1985 by American Psychiatric Association
Differences in nocturnal melatonin secretion between melancholic depressed patients and control subjects
R Brown, JH Kocsis, S Caroff, J Amsterdam, A Winokur, PE Stokes and A Frazer
The authors took multiple serum samples for measurement of melatonin
between 4:30 p.m. and 7:30 a.m. in seven male depressed patients with
melancholia and five healthy male control subjects and found that
melancholic patients had a significantly lower rise of melatonin. They also
compared a second, separate group of 14 women and five men suffering from
melancholic depression with seven healthy male control subjects and nine
depressed women without melancholia. The melancholic patients had a
significantly lower concentration of serum melatonin at 11:00 p.m. than
either the control subjects or the nonmelancholic depressed patients. These
findings support the possibility that the functioning of the pineal gland
is altered in these patients.
