MIBlueDaily
James Grant, M.D.
A new five-year study has recently garnered a lot of attention as it associated long-term use of melatonin supplements to a higher risk of heart failure, according to a news release from the American Heart Association (AHA).
The unpublished study – which will be presented at the AHA’s scientific conference in New Orleans in November – found that individuals who took prescribed melatonin for more than a year had a higher chance of heart failure over five years compared to people who were identified as nonusers.
Many sleep experts have noted the limitations of the study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed. Let’s look at the study and examine why you shouldn’t jump to any conclusions just yet.
Is there a connection between melatonin and heart failure?
The study reviewed the health records of 130,000 adults with chronic insomnia. Participants were split into two groups: one group that took melatonin supplements for at least one year and another group that had no record of taking melatonin.
The researchers – led by a chief medical resident in primary care and internal medicine at SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University in Brooklyn – then examined heart failure over the next five years and determined the people who took melatonin had a 90% higher risk of heart failure than the group who didn’t, and were more than 3.5 times as likely to require hospitalization for heart failure or die from any cause.