Melatonin: A Suitable Agent for Depression Associated with Stroke?

摘要

To the Editor: It is widely known that occurrence of poststroke mooddisorders, especially depression, is one of the most frequent complications of stroke.1 It affects approximately 20%-40% of all patients and the definitive treatment of this clinical picture includes various antidepressant agents.1The evidence about the antide-pressant-like activity of melatonin and melatonin agonists is rapidly increasing.2"7 However melatonin is also an important agent in sleep disturbances, which are shown to be associated with stroke.8 In light of these findings we wanted to evaluate whether this novel antidepressant agent also has neuroprotective effect on cerebral ischemia.