Ma vie en noir. Fifty years with melatonin and the stone of madness

• Autores: Cardinali, Daniel Pedro
• Año de publicación: 2016
• Idioma: inglés
• Tipo de recurso: libro
• Fuente: Cardinali, D.P. Ma vie en noir. Fifty years with melatonin and the stone of madness. Cham: Springer, 2016
• Materia: GLANDULA PINEAL; MELATONINA; Cardinali, Daniel Pedro
• Institución: Pontificia Universidad Católica Argentina

Fil: Cardinali, Daniel Pedro. Pontificia Universidad Católica Argentina. Facultad de Ciencias Médicas. Instituto de Investigaciones Biomédicas; Argentina
Explores the history of pineal and melatonin, from the autobiographical perspective of a leading author in the field. Focuses on the personal experience and achievements of Dr. Daniel Cardinali. Discussion ranges from historical aspects to personal issues. The objective of this book is to summarize; to recapitulate the eventful life of the pineal gland as a historical entity related to the legend of the stone of madness, in large part forgotten; to assess the impact in the life of a scientist who serendipitously linked his scientifi c career to an issue like melatonin at a moment when the groundwork for the “hormone of darkness” was being laid; to ponder the meaning of the work of a scientist and to conclude that it is simply to push a little further the borders of science and to perpetuate this endeavor by nurturing disciples who scientifi cally exceed their teacher’s achievements. This work is not a scientifi c review but what memory has left in the mind of this author after having lived half a century with an objective: to elucidate the mechanism and meaning of the main pineal product, melatonin, and to take it to a stage of therapeutic application. Today we know that in humans pineal melatonin begins to be released every day toward the evening and there is evidence that this serves as the trigger of the sleep process (the signal that “opens the gates of sleep”). Thus a brief account of the historical development of concepts about sleep will be included. There is no doubt that the understanding of sleep has been central to the development of the concept of mind and consciousness, and many famous passages in literature illustrate how the ideas on sleep evolve. Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616), who refl ected on many aspects of sleep in The Ingenious Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha , puts into the mouth of Sancho the following words: All that I know is that so long as I am asleep I have neither fear nor hope, trouble nor glory; and good luck betide him that invented sleep, the cloak that covers over all a man’s thoughts, the food that removes hunger, the drink that drives away thirst, the fi re that warms the cold; the cold that tempers the heat” and, to wind with, the universal coin wherewith everything is bought, the weight and balance, that makes the shepherd equal with the king and the fool with the wise man. Sleep, I have heard say, has only one fault, that it is like death; for between a sleeping man and a dead man there is very little difference (II, 68). Pedro Calderon de la Barca (1600–1681), another prominent Spanish writer, wrote in Life Is a Dream a famous sonnet with the following lines: …What is life? A thing that seems / A mirage that falsely gleams / Phantom joy, delusive rest / Since is life a dream at best / And even dreams themselves are dreams And William Shakespeare (1564–1616) wrote in Henry IV , Part II, Act III, Scene 1: O sleep, O gentle sleep, Nature’s soft nurse, how have I frighted thee That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down And steep my senses in forgetfulness? But no one was more anticipative than Thomas Dekker (c 1572–1632), who wrote about sleep the following words: Sleep is that golden chain that ties health and our bodies together. Today it is clear that the major pandemics we face (obesity, cardiovascular disease, dementias) have as a comorbidity, and presumably as a cause, insuffi cient sleep. As we will see in this book, it is important to understand that we have not always slept in the same way we do today. The invention of the electric lamp by Thomas Edison (1847–1931) was a major landmark in this respect. While Edison emphasized that the use of the electric lamp “did not affect the quality of sleep and was harmful to health,” we sleep today about 3 h less per day than in the pre-Edison era! The inhibition of melatonin secretion by artifi cial light plays an important role in these changes. Melatonin is the prototype of the “chronobiotic” drugs used to synchronize and increase the amplitude of the sleep/wake cycle. In Argentina melatonin was introduced to the market as an over-the-counter medicament for insomnia in 1995, and analogs of melatonin are used for this purpose in the USA (ramelteon, tasimelteon) and for the treatment of depression (agomelatine, approved by the European Medicines Agency in Europe). But none of this explains the reasons for the evolutionary persistence of melatonin already detectable in organisms that neither sleep nor suffer emotional distress. And this is one of the most exciting aspects of melatonin functioning: it is a substance that is present in most living organisms, from unicellular with aerobic respiration, to plants, to higher mammals, an irrefutable proof of its importance for life. We will discuss in this book how the cytoprotective function of melatonin may be of relevance in the prevention of obesity, cardiovascular diseases, or neurodegenerative processes. There is much in the history of pineal melatonin that attracts and that will be recapitulated in this book. But before moving on to that, I feel it necessary to explain the reason for the title, which might puzzle the reader. The discoverer of melatonin, Aaron Lerner, christened the molecule with that name ( melano , Greek for “black”) by its action on the pigment cells of the amphibian skin. Mimicking “La vie en rose,” the immortal Edith Piaf song written in 1946, I call this story on melatonin Ma vie en noir. Following the ideas of Jorge Luis Borges one could imagine memory as a breakdown of oblivion. And somehow the breakdown of the stone of madness is behind this story: perhaps the stone itself has infected the author.