Melatonin regulates the sleep-wake cycle, or circadian rhythms, in many animals, including humans. Produced at night by the pineal gland at the base of the brain, it makes us drowsy at night and, when levels drop in the morning, brings us back to alertness. Despite claims by supplement manufacturers, however, melatonin has shown mixed results as a treatment for disease, whether insomnia, Alzheimer's disease or cancer to decrease or compensate the effect of age and oxidative stress, taking melatonin and other antioxidative drugs is increased in developed countries. Popular supplement of melatonin found to have broader effects on various systems of body like reproductive system. Reproduction is something that has been studied very rigorously, and to identify a new peptide in that arena that seems to be playing such an important role is pretty phenomenal at this time. The present study aimed to investigate the effect of melatonin on the sexual urge of male Swiss albino mice by using Hebb William's maze, model D1. Mice were divided into four groups having equal number of males. Two groups of 6 weeks and other two groups are of 10 weeks of male mice. The entire four groups are separated from female by 15 days prior to experiment. The time taken by male mice to travel from chamber A to chamber B (which contained female mice) was recorded over a period of two months, for both melatonin-treated (0.002 mg/kg body weight) and untreated groups. Results clearly indicate that normal male group takes less time to reach the goal as compared to melatonin treated group. Although there was a continuous decline in the time taken by mice of both the groups to reach the goal but the decline was of greater magnitude in normal male mice. The result shows that melatonin has an inhibitory effect on the reproductive performance of the animal as well as it also affects endocrinological function of the body.
