Oral Supplementation of Melatonin Protects against Fibromyalgia-Related Skeletal Muscle Alterations in Reserpine-Induced Myalgia Rats

Abstract

Fibromyalgia is a chronic syndrome characterized by widespread musculoskeletal pain and an extensive array of other symptoms including disordered sleep, fatigue, depression and anxiety. Important factors involved in the pathogenic process of fibromyalgia are inflammation and oxidative stress, suggesting that ant-inflammatory and/or antioxidant supplementation might be effective in the management and modulation of this syndrome. Recent evidence suggests that melatonin may be suitable for this purpose due to its well known ant-inflammatory, antioxidant and analgesic effects. Thus, in the current study, the effects of the oral supplementation of melatonin against fibromyalgia-related skeletal muscle alterations were evaluated. In detail, 90 Sprague Dawley rats were randomly treated with reserpine, to reproduce the pathogenic process of fibromyalgia and thereafter they received melatonin. The animals treated with reserpine showed moderate alterations at hind limb skeletal muscles level and had difficulty in moving, together with significant morphological and ultrastructural alterations and expression of inflammatory and oxidative stress markers in the gastrocnemius muscle. Interestingly, melatonin, dose and/or time dependently, reduced the difficulties in spontaneous motor activity and the musculoskeletal morphostructural, inflammatory, and oxidative stress alterations. This study suggests that melatonin in vivo may be an effective tool in the management of fibromyalgia-related musculoskeletal morphofunctional damage.

RETRACTED: Sirtuin1 Role in the Melatonin Protective Effects Against Obesity-Related Heart Injury

“…Two blinded investigators performed the analysis, and their evaluations were assumed correct if the values were not significantly different. If there was disagreement concerning the interpretation, the case was reconsidered in order to reach a unanimous agreement (Favero et al, 2017b;Bonomini et al, 2018).…”

Impact of Melatonin on Skeletal Muscle and Exercise

“…Fibromyalgia was induced by reserpine injection and melatonin administered in tap water, concurrent with reserpine, for one or two months. In rat gastrocnemius muscle, melatonin reduced oxidative changes and ameliorated mitochondria shape and cristae, improving voluntary motor activity [110]. More recently, we adopted the same model focusing on mitochondrial markers in rat gastrocnemius muscle.…”

Beneficial Effects of Melatonin on Apolipoprotein-E Knockout Mice by Morphological and 18F-FDG PET/CT Assessments

“…Then, after the blocking step in 3% bovine serum albumin solution for 1 h, the sections were incubated 1 h at 37 • C and 30 min at room temperature with the following primary antibodies: rat monoclonal antibody against CD68 (diluted 1:100; Abcam, Cambridge, UK); rabbit polyclonal antibody against CD163 (diluted 1:50; Abcam, Cambridge, UK); goat polyclonal antibody against TNF-α (diluted 1:200 Santa Cruz Biotechnology Inc., Dallas, TX, USA) [54]; mouse monoclonal antibody against TGF-β (diluted 1:150; Santa Cruz Biotechnology Inc., Dallas, TX, USA) [55] and simultaneously with mouse monoclonal antibody against ICAM-1 (diluted 1:200; Santa Cruz Biotechnology Inc., Dallas, TX, USA) and rabbit polyclonal antibody against VCAM-1 (diluted 1:200; Santa Cruz Biotechnology Inc., Dallas, TX, USA). For immunofluorescence analyses of TNF-α, TGF-β, ICAM-1, and VCAM-1, the sections were labelled with specific conjugated secondary antibodies (diluted 1:200; Invitrogen, Paisley, UK), counterstained with 4 ,6-diamidino-2-phenylindole (DAPI), mounted, and observed with a fluorescent microscope (Nikon, Düsseldorf, Germany) with red/green/blue filters at final magnification of 400× [56][57][58].…”