New Drugs to Provide Complete Wakefulness or Restful Sleep

Researchers at the Children's Hospital Boston and the University of Helsinki, Finland recently announced that they might have found the "secret ingredient" which managed in a proper manner can either help us stay awake all night long or promote a good night's sleep. It is all related to the nitric oxide which is produced in our brain - when the chemical is found in large amounts promotes sleepiness and when in reduced amounts the effect is reversed by promoting full wakefulness.

Therefore, if you are an all-nighter and you need to stay awake throughout the night to study, drive, care for a new-born baby etc., the nitric oxide production in your basal forebrain region must be inhibited. On the other hand, if one suffers from insomnia and other related sleep disorders, the levels of nitric oxide in the same brain area should be increased. It is all as simple as that, state scientists involved in the study.

"This understanding of sleep physiology should provide a completely new basis for the development of drugs to prevent excessive sleepiness or to promote sleep," explains Paul Rosenberg, study co-author and MD, PhD, researcher in the Neurobiology Program at Children's Hospital Boston and a physician in the Center for Pediatric Sleep Disorders at Children's and in the Sleep Disorders Center at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

The study conducted on rats showed that when the animals were kept awake for some extra three hours, the levels of nitric oxide in their brain were continuously increasing - a sign that the rats are tired and sleepy and they have to rest. But scientists did not allow rats to go to sleep, instead they injected nitric-oxide inhibitors in the animals' brains and kept them awake without further need for resting.

In order to tests if the other way around also works, researchers raised levels of nitric oxide in rats' brains and found that the animals became extremely tired and exhausted and fell into deep sleep very similar to a 'recovery' sleep.

Further studies will focus on the development of a drug which inhibits nitric oxide production into the basal forebrain area - to help individuals spend long nights awake - and a drug to increase levels of the same chemical in the brain - to help people who have trouble falling asleep have a good and restful night's (and not only) sleep.