Drug Reverses Effects of Sleep Deprivation

Ryan O'Rourke writes "According to a study led by Dr. Sam A. Deadwyler and published by the Public Library of Science Biology, a new drug called CX717 developed by Cortex Pharmaceuticals has been shown to reverse the biological and behavioral effects of sleep deprivation. Tests performed on monkeys that were subjected to 30-36 hours of sleep deprivation revealed an average test performance accuracy drop to 63 percent, but that performance was restored to 84 percent after administering CX717. During normal alert conditions, performance accuracy of the animals was improved from an average of 75 percent to 90 percent after an injection of CX717. It is also believed the drug may help prevent or restore memory loss in Alzheimer's patients."

Comments

Coming soon...

[lastchance_000]

The 167 hour work week!

Re:Coming soon...

[Cruciform]

In other news:

EA_spouse spontaneously combusts.

Re:Coming soon...

[tumanov]

I think we should all be focusing on being able to work better instead of being able to work longer. I've been doing a lot of introspective thinking about how much I work vs. how much actually gets done. And really its only the last 4 hours before a deadline that the work gets done - regardless of how many all-nighters were pulled.

So while getting read of sleep deprivation effects might be nice, I really just need a drug that'll push me into the last-mile mindset and get me to actually do the amazing work that gets done under pressure. Caffeine and nicotine just don't cut it anymore.

Heck, like one of the replies to your post mentions, the C in this drug could stand for cocaine and it'd probably have the same effect if it WAS just cocaine, except maybe with the downside of addiction.

Re:Coming soon...

[over_exposed]

Taking it to stay competitive is a far cry from being mandatory. Here's a stretch: Steroids enhance athletic ability and many athletes take them to stay competitive "Because taht guy did it and the only way to beat him is to take them too."

What I see happening is substances like this coming out and then people will abuse them. They will become addicted to them. Maybe not physically, but psychologically. "I can't be the best at my job if I don't take these so bottoms up!" As soon as abuse is spotted, public outcry will commence, support groups will spring up and tehy will become as popular as caffeine pills and speed. Not to say that caffeine pills aren't a problem, but they aren't mandatory by any employer and any company that doesn't want a lawsuit will not recommend or even offer them to their employees.

Your ideas have some merit to them and the "Look, why don't you just take one of these? You're letting us down." situation will probably occur, but it won't be at the company level. It will strictly be from employee to employee, peer to peer. Does your company have NoDoz (tm) in the break room? I doubt it.

Lastly, you "I crashed my car because they wouldn't sell me this at the garage and I fell asleep at the wheel." situation is not too likely in my mind. I can complain that my doctor didn't give me an adrenaline shot so I couldn't lift the car off of my wife when we got into a wreck. Ok, bad example, but anywho. I don't think you'll ever be able to register a justifiable complaint against someone because they didn't provide you with performance enhancing (because that's essentially what this is) drugs in any situation. You can complain on a medical basis (ie. my doctor wouldn't give me enough insulin and I went into a diabetic coma) but not on a supplemental basis.

Re:Coming soon...

[Hatta]

Except that no-body holds the patent on cocaine so its illegal.

Nope. Cocaine is illegal because of racism. The fear was that "Negro Cocaine Fiends" have an insatiable need for white women. These "Cocainized Niggers" were ostensibly immune to gun fire. The terms in quotes are actual quotes from newspapers.

Re:Coming soon...

[linzeal]

Mod parent up, the same was done with Lazy Mexicans being used to illegalize marijuana.

More links

[American AC in Paris]

NPR had a good piece on this study this morning.

Here

Don't ignore the signals.

[Poromenos1]

I don't like this. Sleep deprivation effects are there for a reason, to signal that you need to sleep. I can understand if people who can't sleep and need to be alert need to use this (e.g. soldiers in combat), but it's not going to be very good for the average person who needs to do some more work. People need to sleep for various reasons (rest, various chemicals get regenerated, etc). It's not a whim of nature.

Re:Don't ignore the signals.

[Chicane-UK]

Exactly the same sort of post I was going to make.

The body tell us its tired for a reason - it needs good healthy sleep, in order to keep you all in check. People who avoid sleep, people who keep themselves awake with drugs, people who burn the candle at both ends.. they are just setting themselves up for premature death. Just go to sleep!

As Kramer once said in an episode of Seinfeld.. "Well.. I don't argue with the body Jerry. It's an argument you can't win!"

Its a comment I whole heartedly agree with! :)

Re:Don't ignore the signals.

[aduzik]

As someone who suffers from chronic insomnia -- and yeah, I've gone through all the medical nonsense for them to tell me there's nothing wrong with me physically or emotionally -- having a drug to counteract the effects of sleep deprivation sounds like a godsend. For me, all the sleep deprivation effects in the world can't help me fall asleep. For example, I finally fell asleep at about 5:30 this morning and had to get up about an hour and a half later for work.

Some of us are jealous of the relative ease with which the rest of you fall asleep. (The absolute worst is sharing a hotel room after a long trip, where your traveling companion falls asleep right away, but you don't fall asleep for hours) I'd be happy to at least feel as awake as most people seem. The only time I feel that way is when I can sleep in on the weekends. It's mostly just depressing that I can't be that alert the rest of the week -- you know, when it matters most.

Re:Don't ignore the signals.

[cecille]

ha ha...no kidding...my last semester of school we had a huge project where we were working in a lab we could only use at night. Classes, of course, were still during the day, so sleep was something like 9:00-11:00 MWF and 10:30-1:30 TTH. Not a great schedule, but what can you do. Well, about 4 weeks into this (just before exams) I left the lab one morning feeling quite ill. Woke up 4 hours later on the floor of my bathroom. Don't even remember getting home, but from what my friends tell me I was talking about a chipmunk and kept swerving the car. From that point on we decided that it might be good to get a little sleep. Sure enough, 8 hours of solid sleep later I felt like a million. At that point, I think I would have taken something like this gladly, but really...if you're getting that broken, suppressing the symptoms CAN'T be a good idea.

Re:Don't ignore the signals.

[JabberWokky]

(Disclaimer: Drugs are useful. My brother is in the hospital right now, and was likely going to die on Saturday, but is hopefully going to be moved out of the cardiac ICU soon. His life was saved by modern drugs.)

My favorite oddball drugs that are heavily advertised are the "prevents that uncomfortable full feeling" and "cures fullness".

We literally live in a time when being full is considered a major problem worthy of heavy advertising to a large chunk of the human population. Consider the fact that the majority of human history is full of people fighting not to starve to death... and now we're worried about being uncomfortably full.

You can look at that with either bitter sarcasm or wonder at the accomplishments of humanity -- I rotate back and forth. But either way, it's durn funny.

--
Evan

Re:Don't ignore the signals.

[Mondoz]

"The body tell us its tired for a reason - it needs good healthy sleep, in order to keep you all in check."

I've often thought about why we still have certain primal signals.
Pain from obvious sources, for instance.

I skinned my knee. I know I skinned my knee. I can see it. I'm looking right at it. I just cleaned the darn thing. Yet it still smarts like hell.

Why can't I turn off the darn pain receptors?
Why, as a (okay, this next bit is questionable, but just go with it) intelligent being can't I just acknowledge those signals, and snooze them or something?
I know. It hurts. Leave me alone until I get to the hospital.
I know, I'm exhausted. Let me get to a bed without falling over.
I know, I get the picture, send the right chemicals to the right places until I get the right treatment, but until then, just leave me alone!

My knee tells me it hurts for a reason: it needs attention so it won't get infection.
Broken bones hurt so they will get mended.
Neither one know they've been fixed once they've been tended to, so they continue to complain.

"The body tell us its tired for a reason - it needs good healthy sleep, in order to keep you all in check."

If this drug can keep us from actually needing to sleep, then it's just like my knee. I don't really need to sleep, but nobody's actually informed my body yet.

Re:Don't ignore the signals.

[SatanicPuppy]

During the period when I was abusing my body to the limit, I could go three or four days with about 8 hours of sleep. And then I'd crash and LOSE A DAY...i.e. pass out around 3pm on friday and wake up sunday morning at 4:00am. I remember falling asleep in my car, right in front of my apartment, because I was too tired to walk up the stairs.

Passed out once, and my roomate had 5 guys over working on a CS project and it didn't wake me up until 10:30 at night. They'd been there since about 11:00 and I'd been there, asleep, since the night before. And when I say "roommate" I mean we shared a ROOM. I scared the hell out of him when I woke up because they'd thought the big bump in my bed was just a continuation of all the crap piled on top of it. I got up, ate dinner, went right back to sleep.

I'm still paying for that crap, ten years later. It's totally not worth it.

Re:Don't ignore the signals.

[Council]

People need to sleep for various reasons (rest, various chemicals get regenerated, etc).

From what I understand, there's not a clear consensus on why we need sleep. I mean, it does a number of things, and we've figured many of them out, but as far as biology goes none of them seems to be a deal-breaker. I can easily imagine a large mammal that just walks around eating and doing stuff all day. Why is it that we spend a third of our lives in this comatose state?

I mean, it's pretty much taken for granted, but when I stop to think about it, it seems pretty damn weird. Imagine an alien that shows up and we say "we need to go, gotta sleep" and they say "why?" and we say "uhhhh, to recharge." "I thought you ate food for energy." "yeah, it's for . . . maintanence?" "what kind?" "not sure. it's just this powerful compulsion." "what are the leading theories? you mean you aren't even sure why you do this every night?" "zzzzzzz."

Just something interesting that I've given a lot of thought to, especially since I started working unpredicatble night shifts. I wonder if every major mammal needs sleep because we evolved with a light/dark cycle, or if it's just something that it's impossible to construct a complex brain without.

Re:Don't ignore the signals.

[Anonymous Coward]

The bone and the knee both want you to stop fucking moving so they can heal.

Heart attack in a pill

[bigwavejas]

Sleep is critical for muscles/ organs to rebuild themselves. If I were Cortex I'd be a bit hesitant to release this drug to the public, without the strictest prescription. Lest they end up like Merck with Vioxx

Slashdot

[saskboy]

If I stopped reading slashdot until 12:00AM that would help with my sleep deprivation, without the use of drugs.

I have a feeling most other computer users would find the same benefits from turning off their computers at 10:00PM.

In the future...

[lxs]

...we'll all be working 36 hour shifts.

great! now I can work longer...

[utexaspunk]

...so i can make more money. ...so i can buy more cx717 ...so i can work longer. ...so i can make more money ...so i can buy more cx717 ...so i can...

Oh boy

[bogie]

The military is going to love this.

Expect Cortex's IP to be bought the us mil any second now.

Of course the real fun will be when they discover that taking this for months and sleeping 1 hour a night, you go insane and think your a humming bee.

Re:Oh boy

[MmmmAqua]

I have never met anyone in the Army who had any trouble falling asleep any time, anywhere. My experience is limited to cavalry and infantry, though, so maybe that's just something about combat arms troops. Over the course of a year in Baghdad, I was able to fall asleep in some surprising situations.

Of course, when going on extended missions, we also had the option of asking the platoon medics for stimulants. I don't remember what the name of the drug was, but one little white pill kept you up and alert for about two days. You did crash pretty hard after that. Anyway, while there may be some interest in the military for this drug, its use won't be anywhere near as prevalent as you seem to think. The Army likes its combat units to be operationally ready all the time, but also keeps mission durations and objectives as tight as possible to minimize battle fatigue and risk of combat losses. Sometimes you can't avoid a mission that lasts for a week, and in those (relatively rare - I only remember doing maybe a dozen of those two-day-plus missions over a year) situations, a drug to mitigate sleep-dep would be a godsend.

Soon to follow: beverages

[I_am_Rambi]

Watch, coffee and pop will soon have versions of with this drug and without this drug. Soon the human race will become dependant on this just as we are on caffinee.

Interesting...

[ovit]

I read somewhere that a significant biologic reason for sleep was simply that animals who laid down in a dark place for half the time had an evolutionary advantage over thos who didn't (it's about 50% harder to be eaten by a predator if 50% of your time your asleep)...

Rather than do the usual slashdot "Science is EViL" thing, why not really think about the potential here...

Yes, they will probably discover that over use of this has some serious side effect, but all that means is that it shouldn't be over used... It does not mean that we all need to run an hide...

For being a site full of geeks this place is remarkably anti science sometimes...

Re:Interesting...

[An Onerous Coward]

You read wrong. The problem is, there is a direct, linear correlation between body size and amount of time spent sleeping, that has nothing to do with whether one is predator or prey. For example, mice spend the vast majority of their time asleep, while cats spend a good 75% of their time asleep. When you get up to human sized creatures, you expect to see them spend about a third of their life asleep. Elephants sleep about four hours a night. What they do with all those long, dark hours is anybody's guess.

The question of why we sleep is still a bit of a mystery to me, but if you're simply looking at it as "defense from predators", you're going to fundamentally misunderstand the phenomenon.

Re:Interesting...

[bigtangringo]

Oh, you're also dead wrong about the size thing, from the same article I just posted:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/sleep/artic les/whatissleep.shtml

Species Average total sleep time per day
Python 18 hrs
Tiger 15.8 hrs
Cat 12.1 hrs
Chimpanzee 9.7 hrs
Sheep 3.8 hrs
African elephant 3.3 hrs
Giraffe 1.9 hr

EA

[wikkiewikkie]

In related news, productivity at EA is up 44%.

Sometimes it's good to forget.

[PIPBoy3000]

I was just thinking this morning as I punched in the old door combination for the hundredth time that it would be nice if that memory vanished a bit more quickly.

Your brain already does a pretty good job at figuring out what memories should be stored strongly and which ones should be left to fade away. It's almost certainly possible to override that mechanism, but you'll probably end up with incredibly vivid memories of things that aren't very relevant.

Imagine if I popped these pills before studying for organic chemistry in college. Now I'd be having flashbacks of acid/base interactions and other useless trivia while I try to go about my daily job.

Misleading summary, article

[Red Flayer]

Revision: "reverse [some of] the biological and behavioral effects of sleep deprivation"

This drug also increased test performance in the control group. The increase in test performance was slightly more pronounced in the sleep-deprived group.

Caffeine would likely show similar results, as would nasal decongestants and stimulant diet pills (both of which are amphetamines).

Hell, for that matter, I bet crystal meth, in low doses, would produce the same effect.

Meh, wake me up when the real fix for sleep deprivation is discovered... oh, wait...

Women everywhere moan

[Alex P Keaton in da]

Women everywhere moan.... as their number two excuse, right after I have a headache, becomes scientifically irrelevant....
I'm too tired honey....

It's a trick:

[dsginter]

Everyone, I did some digging and found that this "CX717" is simply this.

Nothing new

[Frangible]

Amphetamines have been around for what, 100 years or so? Dextroamphetamine is the Air Force's "go pill" and is quite effective at keeping someone alert when they should be sleeping.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd= Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=1462046 8&query_hl=4

While they argue that this drug is different because of possibly less abuse potential (yet have no data to back that assertation up with, such as self-reinforcing studies in animals), I think the real reason is because pharmaceutical patents only last 20 years. As far as abuse potential goes, addiction is usually characterized by increased dopamine levels in the nucleus accumbens, of which amphetamine activates indirectly; I have seen no evidence as to whether or not CX717 will indirectly raise dopamine levels in that region of the brain as well.

They may claim they're not stimulants, but the action is that of binding to receptors and releasing a neurotransmitter called glutamate. Is that really so different than stimulants binding to a receptor and releasing norepinephrine, another neurotransmitter?

From the journal article, revealed increased activity in prefrontal cortex, dorsal striatum, and medial temporal lobe (including hippocampus) that was significantly enhanced over normal alert conditions following administration of CX717. You would see similar increases in brain activity following the administration of amphetamine as well.

Furthermore, high levels of glutamate have neurotoxic properties: In excess, glutamate causes neuronal damage and eventual cell death, particularly when NMDA receptors are activated.

Somehow though, I think the combination of a pharmaceutical company making $2.00 in profit per pill combined with possibly less of an abuse potential or political incorrectness of usage will make this drug preferred in spite of whatever risks it carries.

Of course, maybe I'm just bitter and skeptical in my old age.

Something funny from the summary

[einhverfr]

I noted that the summary stated that it could restore memory loss in Alzheimer's patients.

Darn'd grandma. Her memory is improving again. Time to restore her memory loss.......

Ok, this is sort of scary....

Yay!

[MightyMartian]

Orlando, FL - Gary Buzzeye has been taking CX717 for seven months now, and says he gets by on two hours of sleep a week.

"It's absolutely fantastic." Buzzeye says as he scrapes away the skin around his eyes with a rusty nail-puller. "I've never felt better, and my productivity is way up." When asked if there were any side-effects, Buzzeye replied "None whatsoever. Since I killed my wife and sold my children to Satan, who happens to live two doors down, things have been great. Now if I could only get the snakes to stop eating my feet, I'd be one hundred percent. Oh, could you get the door, I think it's Napoleon. He's a real bitch, and he likes to steal my aluminum brainguard."

Re:Why in the world would you say that?

[h4rm0ny]

I've seen you repeat this several times now - in what way does Ritalin "have the same effects" as speed?

Both Ritalin (called Methylphenidate in its non-brand name) and Speed (phenylisopropylamine) operate in a similar manner - both prevent the reabsorbtion of monoamine transporters for dopamine and norepinephrine which results in increased amounts of dopamine and norepinephrine in the brain. This promotes nerve impulse transmission in neurons that have those receptors. The effect is something you're probably familiar with (either through experience or second-hand).

Likewise you can get the same high from snorting ritalin (powder it first unless you have biiig nostrils) as you can from speed, and you can get addicted to it too. Both are also used by students and workers desperate to keep focused on a project in that final night of panic. It's just the same as speed for practical purposes. Ritalin doesn't come in huge dosages (per pill), but then they are prescribing it to children.