[Infowarrior] - DARPA: Snorting a Brain Chemical Could Replace Sleep

[Richard Forno]

Snorting a Brain Chemical Could Replace Sleep
By Alexis Madrigal Email 12.28.07 | 12:00 AM


http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2007/12/sleep_deprivation

In what sounds like a dream for millions of tired coffee drinkers,
Darpa-funded scientists might have found a drug that will eliminate
sleepiness.

A nasal spray containing a naturally occurring brain hormone called orexin A
reversed the effects of sleep deprivation in monkeys, allowing them to
perform like well-rested monkeys on cognitive tests. The discovery's first
application will probably be in treatment of the severe sleep disorder
narcolepsy.

The treatment is "a totally new route for increasing arousal, and the new
study shows it to be relatively benign," said Jerome Siegel, a professor of
psychiatry at UCLA and a co-author of the paper. "It reduces sleepiness
without causing edginess."

Orexin A is a promising candidate to become a "sleep replacement" drug. For
decades, stimulants have been used to combat sleepiness, but they can be
addictive and often have side effects, including raising blood pressure or
causing mood swings. The military, for example, administers amphetamines to
pilots flying long distances, and has funded research into new drugs like
the stimulant modafinil (.pdf) and orexin A in an effort to help troops stay
awake with the fewest side effects.

The monkeys were deprived of sleep for 30 to 36 hours and then given either
orexin A or a saline placebo before taking standard cognitive tests. The
monkeys given orexin A in a nasal spray scored about the same as alert
monkeys, while the saline-control group was severely impaired.

The study, published in the Dec. 26 edition of The Journal of Neuroscience,
found orexin A not only restored monkeys' cognitive abilities but made their
brains look "awake" in PET scans.

Siegel said that orexin A is unique in that it only had an impact on sleepy
monkeys, not alert ones, and that it is "specific in reversing the effects
of sleepiness" without other impacts on the brain.

Such a product could be widely desired by the more than 70 percent of
Americans who the National Sleep Foundation estimates get less than the
generally recommended eight hours of sleep per night (.pdf).

The research follows the discovery by Siegel that the absence of orexin A
appears to cause narcolepsy. That finding pointed to a major role for the
peptide's absence in causing sleepiness. It stood to reason that if the
deficit of orexin A makes people sleepy, adding it back into the brain would
reduce the effects, said Siegel.

"What we've been doing so far is increasing arousal without dealing with the
underlying problem," he said. "If the underlying deficit is a loss of
orexin, and it clearly is, then the best treatment would be orexin."

Dr. Michael Twery, director of the National Center on Sleep Disorders
Research, said that while research into drugs for sleepiness is "very
interesting," he cautioned that the long-term consequences of not sleeping
were not well-known.

Both Twery and Siegel noted that it is unclear whether or not treating the
brain chemistry behind sleepiness would alleviate the other problems
associated with sleep deprivation.

"New research indicates that not getting enough sleep is associated with
increased risk of cardiovascular disease and metabolic disorders," said
Twery.

Still, Siegel said that Americans already recognize that sleepiness is a
problem and have long treated it with a variety of stimulants.

"We have to realize that we are already living in a society where we are
already self-medicating with caffeine," he said.

He also said that modafinil, which is marketed as Provigil by Cephalon and
Alertec in Canada, has become widely used by healthy individuals for
managing sleepiness.

"We have these other precedents, and it's not clear that you can't use
orexin A temporarily to reduce sleep," said Siegel. "On the other hand,
you'd have to be a fool to advocate taking this and reducing sleep as much
as possible."

Sleep advocates probably won't have to worry about orexin A reaching
drugstore shelves for many years. Any commercial treatment using the
substance would need approval from the Food and Drug Administration, which
can take more than a decade.