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Introduction: Sleep terror is a parasomnia seen during nonrapid eye movement (NREM) sleep. They typically arise from slow wave (N3) NREM sleep. Sleep terrors have been reported to affect approximately 3% of children and <1% of adults. Management of sleep terrors may take many forms. Along with that its etiology is not enlightened completely, an exact clearness doesn’t exist about the treatment. Although the most used medicines at pharmacological treatment are benzodiazepines and antidepressants, melatonin and other various agents have been used at treatment. In this presentation we aimed to discuss melatonin treatment in patient with sleep terror in the presence of the literature knowledge.
Report of case: 36 months old male patient was consulted to our clinic with complaints of frequently nocturnal awakening, screaming and şuttering for half an hour after falling a sleep, present for a year. There was not any remarcable problem in his birth history, but mother was stressed during pregnancy. She defined her child as stubborn child and claimed that his stubbornness and sleep problems were similar to his husband. Also we learned that patient’s 8-year-old brother has difficulty in falling asleep and his sleep time was shorter than expected. Symptoms of autistic spectrum disorder were not observed in patient according to DSM-IV criteria. Patient’s neurological evaluation was normal. After diagnosis of sleep terror, melatonin treatment for 1 mg/day has been started by our clinic. Patient tolerated the treatment and was complaint free at the end of the month.
Discussion: Sleep terrors are dramatic events that represent a partial arousal state from deep sleep and they are characterized by marked autonomic nervous system activation: tachycardia, tachypnea, tremulousness, mydriasis, and sweating are often present. Management of sleep terrors may take many forms. Although the most used medicines at pharmacological treatment are benzodiazepines and antidepressants, melatonin and other various agents have been used at treatment. We presented 36 month old male patient with symptoms of severe sleep terror and we obtained positive results of melatonin treatment. There is not sufficient information in the literature about the melatonin use in sleep terror. According to this case presentation, melatonin appears to be safe and well tolerated treatment for sleep terror in children . More controlled studies are needed on this issue.