ArticleFrontiers in psychiatry2019
Morning Plasma Melatonin Differences in Autism: Beyond the Impact of Pineal Gland Volume.
Article in Frontiers in psychiatry, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed, 28 citations in OpenAlex.
- Assessment of Serum Melatonin Levels, Sleep Patterns, and Clinical Symptoms in Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Case-Control Study.Psychiatry investigation · 2025Article
- Circadian desynchrony in early life leads to enduring autistic-like behavioral changes in adulthood.Communications biology · 2024Article
- Management of sleep disorders in autism spectrum disorder with co-occurring attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder: update for clinicians.BJPsych open · 2023Review
- Sleep disturbances in autism spectrum disorder: Animal models, neural mechanisms, and therapeutics.Neurobiology of sleep and circadian rhythms · 2023Review
- The trilateral interactions between mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) signaling, the circadian clock, and psychiatric disorders: an emerging model.Translational psychiatry · 2022Review
- Association between cord blood metabolites in tryptophan pathway and childhood risk of autism spectrum disorder and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.Translational psychiatry · 2022Article
- Biological correlates of altered circadian rhythms, autonomic functions and sleep problems in autism spectrum disorder.Annals of general psychiatry · 2022Review
- The Reserve/Maximum Capacity of Melatonin's Synthetic Function for the Potential Dimorphism of Melatonin Production and Its Biological Significance in Mammals.Molecules (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Review
- Autism Spectrum Disorder patients may be susceptible to COVID-19 disease due to deficiency in melatonin.Medical hypotheses · 2021Article
- Mass-spectrometry analysis of the human pineal proteome during night and day and in autism.Journal of pineal research · 2021Article
- Article
- Is there any relationship between autism and pineal gland volume?Polish journal of radiology · 2021Article
- Efficacy and Safety of Melatonin Treatment in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder and Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder-A Review of the Literature.Brain sciences · 2020Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
13 authors at 4 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
While low plasma melatonin, a neuro-hormone synthesized in the pineal gland, has been frequently associated with autism, our understanding of the mechanisms behind it have remained unclear. In this exploratory study, we hypothesized that low melatonin levels in ASD could be linked to a decrease of the pineal gland volume (PGV). PGV estimates with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) with a voxel-based volumetric measurement method and early morning plasma melatonin levels were evaluated for 215 participants, including 78 individuals with ASD, 90 unaffected relatives, and 47 controls. We first found that both early morning melatonin level and PGV were lower in patients compared to controls. We secondly built a linear model and observed that plasma melatonin was correlated to the group of the participant, but also to the PGV. To further understand the relationship between PGV and melatonin, we generated a normative model of the PGV relationship with melatonin level based on control participant data. We found an effect of PGV on normalized melatonin levels in ASD. Melatonin deficit appeared however more related to the group of the subject. Thus, melatonin variations in ASD could be mainly driven by melatonin pathway dysregulation.
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Registered trials
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