GPs Can Now Offer Melatonin For Older Adults With Primary Insomnia

GPs can now offer a melatonin on prescription to treat older adult patients diagnosed with primary insomnia.Primary insomnia disrupts daily life, resulting in clinically significant distress and impairment of social, occupational and daily functioning.

Circadin, the first pharmaceutical grade licensed melatonin, is a prolonged-release formulation of synthesized melatonin that is released over several hours, in order to provide the body with melatonin at an adequate physiological level during the normal hours of resting.

The key to managing primary insomnia is to restore the quality of sleep, rather than the quantity of sleep. Changes occur in the full sleep cycle with age and part of this could be due to a correlation between increasing age and declining levels of melatonin.

Treatment with Circadin may replenish that deficiency and restore the normal sleep cycle for restful, restorative sleep and normal next-day functioning.

Treatment with Circadin has been shown to significantly improve quality of sleep (QOS) and behavior following wakening (BFW), also referred to as next day-functioning, and both contribute to improved quality of life.

Circadin is effective within three weeks of dosing, and helps to induce and maintain sleep.
Source: Medical News Today