Sleep 06: Orexin A

During the summer I commented on the drug Modafinil (Provigil) and its use in replacing sleep.

Development in other sleep replacement drugs is also going on. Researchers studying narcolepsy discovered that many patients lack Orexin.

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."

Initial research on monkeys is promising:

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.

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Assuming the product has few side affects and is not addictive, the potential gains in personal productivity are staggering.

The full article appears on Wired.