Neurotrophins, such as brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), are essential for neuronal survival and growth. The signaling cascades initiated by BDNF and its receptor are the key regulators of synaptic plasticity, which plays important role in learning and memory formation. Changes in BDNF levels and signaling pathways have been identified in several neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and Huntington’s disease, and have been linked with the symptoms and course of these diseases. This review summarizes the current understanding of the role of BDNF in several neurodegenerative diseases, as well as the underlying molecular mechanism. The therapeutic potential of BDNF treatment is also discussed, in the hope of discovering new avenues for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases.

This study presents a bibliometric analysis of the publications on melatonin research from the Scopus database during the period 2015–2019. Based on the keywords used, which are related to melatonin in the article title, the study retrieved 4411 documents for further analysis using various tools. We used Microsoft Excel to conduct the frequency analysis, VOSviewer for data visualization, and Harzing’s Publish or Perish for citation metrics and analysis. This study reports the results using standard bibliometric indicators such as the growth of publications, authorship patterns, collaboration, and prolific authors, country contribution, most active institutions, preferred journals, and top-cited articles. Based on our findings, there is a continuous growth of publications on melatonin research for 5 years since 2015. China was the largest contributor to melatonin research, followed by the United States. The Journal of Pineal Research published the most number of publications related to melatonin research. Our findings suggest that the role of melatonin in plant and food sciences, as well as in cancer, may in later years take over the clusters that earlier dominated melatonin research.

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a primary cause of dementia in the middle-aged and elderly worldwide. Animal models for AD are widely used to study the disease mechanisms as well as to test potential therapeutic agents for disease modification. Among the non-genetically manipulated neuroinflammation models for AD, lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced animal model is commonly used. This review paper aims to discuss the possible factors that influence rats’ response following LPS injection. Factors such as dose of LPS, route of administration, nature and duration of exposure as well as age and gender of animal used should be taken into account when designing a study using LPS-induced memory impairment as model for AD.

The intensity of pain sensation exhibits marked day and night variations. Since the intensity of pain perception is low during dark hours of the night when melatonin levels are high, this hormone has been implicated as one of the prime antinociceptive substances. A number of studies have examined the antinociceptive role of melatonin in acute, inflammatory and neuropathic pain animal models. It has been demonstrated that melatonin exerts antinociceptive actions by acting at both spinal cord and supraspinal levels. The mechanism of antinociceptive actions of melatonin involves opioid, benzodiazepine, α(1)- and α(2)-adrenergic, serotonergic and cholinergic receptors. Most importantly however, the involvement of MT(1)/MT(2) melatonergic receptors in the spinal cord has been well documented as an antinociceptive mechanism in a number of animal models of pain perception. Exogenous melatonin has been used effectively in the management of pain in medical conditions such as fibromyalgia, irritable bowel syndrome and migraine and cluster headache. Melatonin has been tried during surgical operating conditions and has been shown to enhance both preoperative and post-operative analgesia. The present review discusses the available evidence indicating that melatonin, acting through MT(1)/MT(2) melatonin receptors, plays an important role in the pathophysiological mechanism of pain.

Melatonin, N-acetyl-5-methoxytryptamine, is a molecule with diverse physiological functions. This neuro-hormone affects reproductive performance in a wide variety of species. In most animals, but not exclusively all, melatonin has an antigonadotrophic effect. The seasonal changes in the number of hours per day that melatonin is secreted mediate the temporal coupling of reproductive activity to seasonal changes in day-length. These observations stimulated a search for a role for the pineal gland and melatonin in human reproduction. Clinical experience related to this issue has yielded inconclusive and sometimes conflicting results. This article reviews the current available evidence concerning the effects of melatonin on human reproductive processes (e.g., puberty, ovulation, pregnancy, and fertility). Possible reasons for the vagueness and elusiveness of the clinical effects are discussed.

Scientific research on honey has grown substantially over the past decades, accumulating more evidence on its role in complementary and alternative medicine. We conducted a bibliometric analysis of honey research from 2011 to 2020 to see the trend of publications in this study area. Based on the keywords used, which are related to honey in the article title, the study retrieved 4,433 documents for further analysis. VOSviewer software was used to create maps based on network data of scientific publications displaying relationships among researchers, countries, and scientific journals. Author keywords were used to explore the co-occurrence of different terms connected to honey research. Results reveal close and strong interconnections between the top authors suggesting a considerable strong research link. The top country researching on honey was the United States, while the top journal was Food Chemistry. In terms of co-occurrence, the top author keywords were “honey”, “antioxidant”, “chemometric”, “Manuka honey” and “antibacterial”. These analyses of the existing work provide a valuable and important reference for researchers and practitioners in honey research communities.