No abstract

To develop effective patient education and improve patients' diabetic control and own complications, educational strategies need to consider patients' health literacy levels and self-care skills.

Correspondence should be addressed to Y. T.W. (y.t.wang@utoronto.ca) Melatonin, a hormone principally produced and released by the pineal gland, has been shown to regulate a variety of biological functions including circadian rhythms, sleep-wake cycles and reproduction 1 , presumably through activating high-affinity G-protein-coupled receptors 2-5 . We report here that these subtypes can differentially modulate the function of type-A g-aminobutyric acid (GABA A ) receptor, the principal neurotransmitter receptor mediating synaptic inhibition in the CNS 6,7 . This work demonstrates that melatonin, through activation of different receptor subtypes, can exert opposite effects on the same substrate, suggesting that receptor subtype is the primary molecular basis for the diversity of melatonin effects.Two mammalian melatonin receptor subtypes, Mel 1a and Mel 1b , have been cloned 2-4 , but, because of a lack of subtype-specific agonists and antagonists, it has proven difficult to assign specific roles to each subtype 2,5 . Probably the best-characterized actions of melatonin in