Posted on 04/22/2023 8:44:41 PM PDT by ConservativeMind
Sleep disturbances can be an early sign of Alzheimer's. It's a vicious cycle: Alzheimer's disease involves changes to the brain that disrupt sleep, and poor sleep accelerates harmful changes to the brain.
Researchers have identified a possible way to help break that cycle. A small, two-night study has shown that people who took a sleeping pill before bed experienced a drop in the levels of key Alzheimer's proteins.
The study involved a sleeping aid known as suvorexant.
Suvorexant belongs to a class of insomnia medications known as dual orexin receptor antagonists. Orexin is a natural biomolecule that promotes wakefulness. When orexin is blocked, people fall asleep.
Alzheimer's disease begins when plaques of the protein amyloid beta start building up in the brain. After years of amyloid accumulation, a second brain protein, tau, begins to form tangles that are toxic to neurons.
The participants were given a lower dose (10 mg) of suvorexant (13 people), a higher dose (20 mg) of suvorexant (12 people) or a placebo (13 people) at 9 p.m. and then went to sleep. Researchers withdrew a small amount of cerebrospinal fluid via spinal tap every two hours for 36 hours, starting one hour before the sleeping aid or placebo was administered, to measure how amyloid and tau levels changed over the next day and a half.
Amyloid levels dropped 10% to 20% in the cerebrospinal fluid of people who had received the high dose of suvorexant compared to people who had received placebo, and the levels of a key form of tau known as hyperphosphorylated tau dropped 10% to 15%, compared to people who had received placebo. Both differences are statistically significant.
A second dose of suvorexant, administered on the second night, sent the levels of both proteins down again for people in the high-dose group.
(Excerpt) Read more at medicalxpress.com ...
The drug is currently available.
Is it OTC?
CA....
Bring back Quaaludes!
Aside from this they are instant cure for waning female virility
No question of that
BM
this was a two night study.
This reads like I would expect, that suvorexant is not itself effective against Alzheimer’s. It suppresses orexin, the body’s wakefulness hormone. Suppressing orexin makes patients sleep, and sleep suppresses inflammation. Inflammation reduction reduces amyloid beta production, and suppresses the onset of Alzheimer’s.
Sleep is key.
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