Case study: Melatonin

gwern

I discuss melatonin's effects on sleep & its safety; I segue into the general benefits of sleep and the severely disrupted sleep of the modern Western world, the cost of melatonin use and the benefit (eg. enforcing regular bedtimes), followed by a basic cost-benefit analysis of melatonin concluding that the net profit is large enough to be worth giving it a try barring unusual conditions or very pessimistic safety estimates.

Full essay: http://www.gwern.net/Melatonin

I discuss melatonin's effects on sleep & its safety; I segue into the general benefits of sleep and the severely disrupted sleep of the modern Western world, the cost of melatonin use and the benefit (eg. enforcing regular bedtimes), followed by a basic cost-benefit analysis of melatonin concluding that the net profit is large enough to be worth giving it a try barring unusual conditions or very pessimistic safety estimates.

Full essay: http://www.gwern.net/Melatonin

Good points.

Have there been any meta-analyses of how well supplement studies on animals tend to transfer to humans?

On the general topic of animal model external validity & translation to humans (with obvious relevance to supplements & nootropics), here are the major systematic reviews, meta-analyses, and articles criticizing the routine failures of animal models to provide any meaningful information about dangers or benefits in humans, and documenting the even lower quality of animal experiments than usual in (human) medicine or psychology:

"Nimodipine in animal model experiments of focal cerebral ischemia: a systematic review", Horn 2001; review
&qu

... (read more)

0[anonymous]13y

I don't know of any good meta-analysis or review, aside from some quick searching turning up "Translation of Research Evidence From Animals to Humans" & "Can Animal Models of Disease Reliably Inform Human Studies?" which seems to be narrower than one would want (examining treatment for specific issues in animal models translating to successful treatment in humans, which is much more likely to translate than your press release). There are some interesting examples, though; from the second link: [...] From my appendix: [...] (I imagine that the latter is particularly relevant; how many thousands of mouse studies on inflammation were part of the evidence base for those <150 clinical trials? Probably quite a few. And it seems that they all are essentially irrelevant to anything in humans. Now, imagine the translation rate for bird to primate, based on a bird system which doesn't even exist in humans...)

0A1987dM13y

I suspect it might also depend, among other things, on how closely related those animals are to us. I would likely take your study more seriously if it was done on mammals, and even more so if it was done on primates.

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Case study: Melatonin

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Case study: Melatonin

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