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Sexual healing

A NATURALLY occurring body chemical may help boost sexual function in
impotent males.

Melatonin, a substance that helps set the body’s internal clock, has been
linked to sexual function in several studies, but the results have been
unclear.

Filippo Drago and Lina Busa of the University of Catania Medical School in
Italy studied rats who either couldn’t get an erection or who lost interest
during sex and didn’t ejaculate. One hour before a mating test, they injected
the animals with low doses of melatonin, between 10 and 100 micrograms per
kilogram.

Melatonin helped both types of rats have sex and ejaculate. “If these
findings can be confirmed in men,” they write in Brain Research (vol
878, p 98), “they could be of clinical importance.”