Serotonin and Sleep: Molecular, Functional and Clinical Aspects
621 pp, $219
Basel, Switzerland: Birkhäuser Verlag AG, 2008
ISBN-13: 978-3-7643-8560-6
- Giuseppe Di Giovanni, PhD, ReviewerDepartment of Physiology and BiochemistryFaculty of Medicine and SurgeryUniversity of MaltaMsida, Malta giuseppe.digiovanni@um.edu.mt
Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text.
- KEYWORDS:
- 6-HYDROXYTRYPTAMINE
- SEROTONIN
- SLEEP
- SLEEP DISORDERS
Serotonin (5-hydroxytryptamine [5-HT]) is one of the oldest biologically active compounds on earth, preserved through at least 500 million years of evolution. Since its discovery in the 1940s in the mammalian intestinal mucosa and in the central nervous system, 5-HT has been shown to be involved in virtually all cognitive and behavioral human functions, and alterations in its neurochemistry have been implicated in the etiology of a plethora of neuropsychiatric disorders, such as schizophrenia, depression, anxiety, and Parkinson disease. Since the beginning, it appeared that 5-HT might have a role in sleep, but initial enthusiasm has been dampened because of the subtle effect demonstrated by this monoamine. Today, the interest in 5-HT in sleep research is going through a renaissance, thanks to the availability of highly selective serotonergic compounds and the urgent need for new sleep disorder treatments owing to the shortcomings of current ones. Notably, more than one-quarter of …
