Lupus is not fun.

First, a recap on how lupus works: lupus is an autoimmune disease where the immune system attacks its own tissues, causing inflammation and organ damage (to oversimplify it in very few words).

Next, how lupus is currently treated: mostly with immunosuppressant drugs, which reduce symptoms but have significant side effects, not least of all the fact that your immune system will be suppressed, leaving you vulnerable to infections, cancer, aging, and the like. So, there’s really a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” aspect here (because untreated lupus will run your immune system into the ground with its chronic inflammation, which will also leave you vulnerable to the aforementioned things).

See also: How to Prevent (or Reduce) Inflammation

And now it seems there is a new (cheap and accessible!) potential avenue for treatment…

Why melatonin matters

Melatonin, a hormone naturally produced mostly by the pineal gland, has antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties that directly target immune dysregulation and oxidative stress central to lupus pathology, including that of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and lupus nephritis (LN).

For a refresher on melatonin, check out: Melatonin: A Safe, Natural Sleep Aid? ← since most people who take supplemental melatonin do so in order to sleep, that was the focus of this article, but it discusses its safety issues and so forth too.

On which note, do also be aware of: Can kids overdose on melatonin gummies? Yes, and an online store has suspended sales ← the problem here is primarily twofold, e.g. 1) children errantly eating gummies as though they are candies 2) shoddy regulation and deceptive labelling meaning that dosing is far from precise. But you will note that both of those things are circumstantial, rather than intrinsic problems with melatonin.

Lastly, before we get back to lupus, let’s mention that the recent sensationalist headlines about melatonin and heart health were a little overstated, insofar as it was based on an associative observational study, and could not prove causality. Still the numbers do give cause for attentiveness at the very least: Melatonin Supplementation & Your Heart

As for how this works for lupus, researchers (Dr. Farnoosh Seirafianpour et al.) investigated this and worked from the initial finding that people with SLE typically have lower serum melatonin levels, with increasing reductions correlating with higher disease activity.

What Dr. Seirafianpour and her team did next was look at animal and cellular lupus models, which show melatonin reduces renal inflammation, oxidative stress, fibrosis, and structural kidney damage, indicating a protective role in LN in particular (remembering that the “N” there stands for nephritis, i.e. renal inflammation, oxidative stress, and the resulting fibrosis and structural kidney damage).

Next up, she and the other researchers turned to a double-blind randomized controlled trial, to show how melatonin supplementation lowers oxidative stress markers such as malondialdehyde (MDA), and:

❝Administration of melatonin has shown potential in significantly reducing renal damage caused by systemic lupus erythematosus by modulating the expression of specific proteins associated with fibrosis, apoptosis, oxidative stress, and inflammation.

Moreover, melatonin effectively attenuated the severity of lupus nephritis, primarily by mitigating oxidative stress and inflammation, which are critical factors in lupus nephritis pathogenesis.❞

Read in full: Melatonin: Diagnostic evidence and therapeutic roles in systemic lupus erythematosus

One final thing noted in the paper was that circulating melatonin follows circadian rhythms, making standardized timing and sampling protocols essential for both research and clinical interpretation.

On an end-user level (i.e: for you or your loved one with lupus)? This means that it’s important to work with your circadian rhythm rather than against it.

For how to do that beyond the obvious, see: The Circadian Rhythm: Far More Than Most People Know

Want to learn more?

For a much more in-depth treatment of lupus management, you might like this excellent book we reviewed a while back:

The Lupus Encyclopedia: A Comprehensive Guide For Patients & Healthcare Providers – by Dr. Donald Thomas et al.

The “et al.” in question? Jemima Albayda, MD; Divya Angra, MD; Alan N. Baer, MD; Sasha Bernatsky, MD, PhD; George Bertsias, MD, PhD; Ashira D. Blazer, MD; Ian Bruce, MD; Jill Buyon, MD; Yashaar Chaichian, MD; Maria Chou, MD; Sharon Christie, Esq; Angelique N. Collamer, MD; Ashté Collins, MD; Caitlin O. Cruz, MD; Mark M. Cruz, MD; Dana DiRenzo, MD; Jess D. Edison, MD; Titilola Falasinnu, PhD; Andrea Fava, MD; Cheri Frey, MD; Neda F. Gould, PhD; Nishant Gupta, MD; Sarthak Gupta, MD; Sarfaraz Hasni, MD; David Hunt, MD; Mariana J. Kaplan, MD; Alfred Kim, MD; Deborah Lyu Kim, DO; Rukmini Konatalapalli, MD; Fotios Koumpouras, MD; Vasileios C. Kyttaris, MD; Jerik Leung, MPH; Hector A. Medina, MD; Timothy Niewold, MD; Julie Nusbaum, MD; Ginette Okoye, MD; Sarah L. Patterson, MD; Ziv Paz, MD; Darryn Potosky, MD; Rachel C. Robbins, MD; Neha S. Shah, MD; Matthew A. Sherman, MD; Yevgeniy Sheyn, MD; Julia F. Simard, ScD; Jonathan Solomon, MD; Rodger Stitt, MD; George Stojan, MD; Sangeeta Sule, MD; Barbara Taylor, CPPM, CRHC; George Tsokos, MD; Ian Ward, MD; Emma Weeding, MD; Arthur Weinstein, MD; Sean A. Whelton, MD

The reason we mention this is to render it clear that this isn’t one man’s opinions (as happens with many books about certain topics), but rather, a panel of that many doctors all agreeing that this is correct and good, evidence-based, up-to-date (as of the publication of this latest revised edition all so recently) information.

Want to learn less?

If the aforementioned 848-page opus seems a little too overwhelming, then you might prefer:

The Lupus Solution – by Dr. Tiffany Caplan & Dr. Brent Caplan ← a much slimmer tome; just 182 pages 🙂

Take care!