Snortable Drug 'Replaces' Sleep For Monkeys In Trials

sporkme writes "A DARPA-funded research project at UCLA has wrapped up a set of animal trials testing the effects of inhalation of the brain chemical orexin A, a deficiency of which is a characteristic of narcolepsy. Monkeys were deprived of sleep, and then given a shot of the compound. 'The study ... 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.' Researchers seem cautious to bill the treatment as a replacement for sleep, as it is not clear that adjusting brain chemistry could have the same physical benefits of real sleep in the long run. The drug is aimed at replacing amphetamines used by drowsy long-haul military pilots, but there would no doubt be large demand for such a remedy thanks to its apparent lack of side-effects."

But can it *replace* sleep?

[BWJones (18351)]

Years ago I was asked to join a group doing government work in exploring drugs related to sleep replacement or to maintain alertness in certain groups of people. This sort of stuff made me uncomfortable then and it still gives me the creeps.

The question for me always is whether or not the drug can *replace* sleep and all of its critical physiological functions. Sleep is a complex phenomenon with very specific architectures that helps maintain learning, performance, sanity and literature suggests more far reaching benefits from regular sleep. Lots of drugs can make the brain look "awake" including amphetamines and modafinil, itself widely used by people to maintain activities in the face of sleep needs. However, there are long term biological implications for not allowing one to invoke sleep including poor long term performance on learning and memory and there is some literature that suggests cardiovascular implications as well as other problems. Now, while the adverse effects of amphetamines are well known, they have been used for at least 60 years. On the other hand, drugs like modafinil are very recent and you may be shocked to find out just how many physicians, pilots, military personnel, truck drivers and housewives are currently taking modafinil to maintain alertness in the face of lack of sleep.

Re:But can it *replace* sleep?

[Jeff DeMaagd (2015)]

This sort of thing looks just like the same kind of "quick fix", I'm really skeptical of this one too. IIRC, most of our self-repair functions happen when we sleep, so this probably has long-term implications that won't be caught in an 18 month trial.

Re:But can it *replace* sleep?

[PopeRatzo (965947)]

Yeah, leave it to science to try to replace the one part of my life that I really, unconditionally adore. I'm a reasonably productive person, and I've done quite a lot in my half-life, but there's nothing like 9 hours of uninterrupted sleep to make me a wonderfully happy man. I love my wife and kid. Food and sex are great. But sleep... Sleep is like the best bottle of wine you ever drank, cubed. It's like falling in love every single night. It's a fabulous journey, it's a long-sought homecoming. It's a precious fluid dropped on a parched tongue.

A drug that would make sleep unnecessary?

Pass.

Re:

[Vellmont (569020)]

Yeah, leave it to science to try to replace the one part of my life that I really, unconditionally adore.

"Science" isn't trying to replace that, people are trying to do that. Science is just the tool used to accomplish it.

If you want to blame anything, blame the motivation people have to sleep less and less. The research is funded by the military for pilots, but the interest from the rest of the public comes from that.

Re:But can it *replace* sleep?

[leenks (906881)]

Out of interest, how much exercise do you do per day, and what do you eat? These things can have a massive effect on the ability to sleep - especially the exercise aspect.

Re:But can it *replace* sleep?

[PopeRatzo (965947)]

I would like to limit my sleep to neccesary minimum if only it would give me more producivity time.

Maybe we have differing notions of "productivity". I've been playing with lucid dreaming, on and off, for about 25 years. I find that a really good night's sleep, with energetic, "strong" dreams will make me twice as productive the following day, while a night of insufficient sleep brings a day where I have to exert twice as much mental energy to produce the same result. In fact, when I'm in sleep deficit, I often can't produce anything at all.

Maybe this is unique to artists, musicians, writers, etc. Perhaps if I was some sort of middle manager or legal secretary or director of tech support for an insurance company, lack of sleep would make less difference. But I bet programmers do better with a good night's sleep.

I understant that when you work 8-10 hours and sleep 8 hours and commute 2.5 hours it doesn't leave a lot of time for living. That's why I've tried so hard to arrange my life so I don't have to work 40 hours per week to support my family and have tried to live close to my place of work (or work at home) so I don't throw away so many hours of spirit-draining activities such as commuting. Although, for the few years that I rode my bike 15 miles to (and from) work every day, I found that under certain circumstances, commuting doesn't have to be so bad.

But the main thing was coming to terms with the fact that working 40+ hours every week in a job that you don't like just so you can have health insurance and pay credit card debt was not an acceptable way to live. Then, it was just a matter of making my decisions with that in mind.

Re:But can it *replace* sleep?

[PopeRatzo (965947)]

You know, Monty, it was during a few weeks, some decade-plus ago, when my wife and daughter were visiting my inlaws and I was home alone, that I found out just how beautiful going to bed early could be.

When I was in college, and for some years thereafter, I made a living playing in a band. That meant staying out until 4-5am every night, sleeping until after noon, then doing it all over again. Even when I transitioned to a more conventional lifestyle, I was still definitely a night person and would stay up reading late into the night and then sleeping late (on the weekends at least) when I could and hating to wake up in the morning.

But going to be early, and then finding out just how lovely it is to be awake at 5am when the world is still asleep, was an epiphany for me. Now I've learned that those first few hours of the morning are my most productive. Maybe it's middle age, but I have been transformed into a total morning person and I'm much happier for it.

A world without sleep

[Plazmid (1132467)]

What will happen if we ever find a way to truly avoid sleep? Will it become a requirement that we take the drug to work for a certain company? Will the company only hire people who take the anti-sleep drug or pay more to those who take it because they work longer. Will companies whose employees take anti-sleep pills 'out-compete' those who don't? Could the world eventually end up sleepless?

Re:A world without sleep

[name*censored* (884880)]

Like you've implied, if we DID ever find a way to avoid sleep, we'd simply end up filling our new-found time with more work. All we'd be doing is making ourselves physically/emotionally exhausted, with precious little time to even rest. Add this to the fact that we'd be taking some horrible drug that would no doubt make people feel uneasy due to the loss of their circadian rhythm, and you've got yourself one miserable world to live in.

Will it become a requirement that we take the drug to work for a certain company?

Any sensible company which required 24 hour staffing would still resort to shift workers, unless there was some major advantage to compensate the natural loss of efficiency of people working ridiculously long shifts. The company would need to pay much more to compensate the single workers' efforts and drug-taking than it would have to pay 2 or 3 shift workers. The only way that a society of sleeplessness could occur is if there was suddenly a massive shortage of jobs, and people had to sacrifice to get a job (which seems to be getting more unlikely - the "baby boomer" population is retiring and there are scarcely enough people to fill the jobs). It's much more likely that once a sizeable population starts taking the drug, society will simply expect more of people (in terms of social status/affluence), and people will take these pills to out-compete each other in the EXTRA-CURRICULAR field(s) (which may extend to the work environment).

Re:A world without sleep

[Yvanhoe (564877)]

Well sleepless people would consume more (probably 6 meals a day) and would have more leisure time as well. This require more work/money. The important statistic is the ratio between time spent at work and time spent having fun.

Also, even if it shorten the lifespan of individuals when counted in days of life, it would be interesting to see if it extends it when counted in "awaken hours".

Re:But can it *replace* sleep?

[Kierthos (225954)]

Cool. Let me know when all you PETA morons line up to be in those "we didn't use any animals at all so we have no way of knowing what this drug will really do to you" clinical trials.

What's that? No, you can't back out. Think of the animals!

Replacement for sleep?

[Wicko (977078)]

How can this replace sleep? Muscles need to rest, too. I guess it would be useful for us that need to sleep with one eye open. A drug for the paranoid.

Re:Replacement for sleep?

[the_humeister (922869)]

Exactly. Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean that they're not after you...

2 am post

[Plazmid (1132467)]

A 2 am post about a drug to replace sleep, now isn't that ironic!

Re:

[RealGrouchy (943109)]

A 2 am post about a drug to replace sleep, now isn't that ironic!

No, it isn't:

ironic [wiktionary.org] (comparative more ironic, superlative most ironic)
Adjective
      1. Both coincidental and contradictory in a humorous or poignant and extremely improbable way.

- RG>

Re:2 am post

[Plunky (929104)]

yes it is

Re:

[GuruBuckaroo (833982)]

No it isn't.

replacement vs supplement

[Bananatree3 (872975)]

I doubt this drug would permanently replace sleep without some form of side-effect. However, I'm sure it could work as a good "supplement" to sleep for periods of time where awareness is crucial. A low side effect No Doze?

Will Smith said not to research crazy new drugs

[by Anonymous Coward]

You know who else don't need sleep?

Zombies.

Why not modafinil?

[by Anonymous Coward]

Provigil (modafinil) has been shown to remove the need for sleep for days on end without any side effects, including the fun ones, like euphoria. Why are pilots still popping dexies?

Re:

[Torvaun (1040898)]

Maybe they like the euphoria. Maybe dexies have other benefits other than delaying the need for sleep.

Most Conservative Response

[by Anonymous Coward]

The FAA and military medical examiners are extremely conservative. Until a drug has been used for a long time in a large group of people with no adverse side affects, it won't be approved for flight. Even after that, it's not approved until ground testing on the specific pilot is done. For example, Allegra was approved 10 years after it was approved by the FDA, but I still had to take it for 2 weeks before I could fly with it. A stupid allergy drug, yup, 2 weeks without work. Drugs being used off label, no

All we've got is...

[n1000 (1051754)]

..."No apparent side effects"

More research needs to be done before we can have a worthwhile discussion of this as a "sleep replacement."

Also, this would not be a permanent replacement, so no trying to bash this study with the 'The human body needs sleep' argument.

Re:

[cp.tar (871488)]

I do wonder if it can be applied as a quick fix.

It would have to work nearly instantly, though... imagine a sleepy driver. The car's computer can detect the drowsiness, make a surprising, loud noise to snap the driver awake, and spray a mist of this drug in his face. Enough to get home safely, but not enough to hamper the real sleep he'll get when he gets home.

Speculation

[localman (111171)]

Without having performed any research at all, I'm going to speculate that actual sleep is very important. In the wild it is dangerous to be unconscious for hours at a time. If it wasn't absolutely necessary, then nature would have found a way to avoid it. Or, more correctly stated, not needing sleep would seem to be a pretty amazing advantage.

But, almost anything with measurable cognitive abilities needs sleep. So there must be some very important work going on there. Probably laying down neural hardlines where temporary chemicals were making pathways before? I'm just guessing, but it's got to be something that requires a partial shutdown.

I think the technology is cool and would be useful for some things, though. I'm always in favor of exploring the outer limits of our abilities. It will be very interesting to see what happens if a person uses this chemical sleep exclusively for, say weeks at a time. Maybe we'll learn what sleep is really for by seeing what stops working correctly. My guess is that they'll not be able to recall anything beyond the past couple days. Things that happened too far back in their wakefulness will not get layed down as long term memories and will be permanently lost.

That is, it'll be kind of like Memento except with, say, a 72 hour working memory instead of 10 minutes.

Re:Speculation

[timmarhy (659436)]

my bet is that they go insane before anything else. supressing the urge to sleep is very different to replacing sleep, in the same fashion that being constipated is not a replacment for taking a shit.

Re:Speculation

[Disseminated (1022915)]

Well that sure beats the hell out of a car analogy!

Re:Speculation

[Jeff DeMaagd (2015)]

A lot of this is already known to science. There is a family that (I think) has a prion disease such that if a family member gets it, they stay awake until they die a few months later - and it sounds like a very horrible death too.

Here's a link to the story I heard about.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6503414 [npr.org]

Re:Speculation

[memfrob (157990)]

There is a family that (I think) has a prion disease such that if a family member gets it, they stay awake until they die a few months later - and it sounds like a very horrible death too.

*shudder* That's the sort of horror story that keeps me up at night...

Re:

[Danny Rathjens (8471)]

There is a flaw in your idea that evolution only ends up keeping that which is absolutely necessary for survival. Sometimes evolution ends up keeping features that are detrimental to creature's survival or reproductive ability in the short run for some indirect "purpose". Consider the huge and awkward tail of the peacock or the vulnerable external genitalia we male humans have.

Perhaps needing to be unconscious for hours at a time is one of the reasons many animals have to join together in groups, and tho

Re:Speculation

[kawdyr (1209648)]

Actually, one important theory of sleep says the opposite - that we evolved it to keep us OUT of trouble - saving energy and avoiding roaming, which puts us at greater risk of meeting predators. As I recall, this theory is (partially) supported by diet being one of the best predictors of the amount of sleep an animal needs. Of course if that was sleep's only purpose, you'd think we'd stay conscious for it so we could react to a predator that found us... so it's probably quite multi-faceted. Sleep [wikipedia.org] - See preservation and protection theory

Re:

[gregor-e (136142)]

The selective pressures of the environment are radically altered by presence or absence of daylight. This profound change results in two separate ecosystems. Sleep is a hack to enable survival in both worlds. Those species best adapted to a lit world will find their more restless members get eaten if they don't sit absolutely still at night. And vice-versa. Evolving to be competitive in both worlds is a much taller order. Evolution settles for the first solution that assures reproduction, not the ulti

A quote from my high school days

[PinkyGigglebrain (730753)]

"Thanks to modern chemistry sleep is now optional"

This sort of stuff creeps me out. As BWJones commented, we don't know enough about exactly how sleep works and what its function is in our mental health to start eliminating it by messing with the brain's chemistry. This will likely end up being abused by someone, be it the military, commercial pilots, or students trying to cram for a test, or some sicko as part of a brain washing regime, it doesn't matter, it will happen and it won't be pretty.

I'll stick with coffee thank you very much.

lan party!

[nilbog (732352)]

ZOMG this is going to lead to some absolutely heinous lan parties!

In related news...

[pushing-robot (1037830)]

...Sysadmins have recently discovered they can improve uptime by eliminating routine maintenance.

Re:

[thegrassyknowl (762218)]

..Sysadmins have recently discovered they can improve uptime by eliminating routine maintenance.

s/Sysadmins/Managers/

Sysadmins know that regular scheduled downtime is necessary to keep things running smoothly. A well designed system can take certain parts offline without causing a noticible loss of service. The human brain runs roughly similarly; parts can come and go from service (sleep, etc) and the brain will keep running.

Regular scheduled downtime in controlled conditions keeps your machine runn

Re:

[BosstonesOwn (794949)]

Man that joke flew right over your head.

I was wondering what the managers here were giving us to keep us going. hmmm more powdered donuts please!

Some people already do live without sleep

[enigma48 (143560)]

A few years back, I did some reading from a semi-reliable source (maybe Reader's Digest) about two people in the world who can't sleep for more than a few minutes.

One was a guy in his twenties who lived in Israel. An explosion left some shrapnel in his brain and could no longer sleep. When I read the story, he was just finishing a Law degree.

Another story was about an older man in Germany who hadn't been able to sleep at least since his teens. He was 50ish and could sleep for up to 5 minutes at best. He lived a relatively normal life.

Obviously in some cases, the body can adjust to getting by without sleep - I wonder if their bodies learned how to overproduce this chemical?

If only...

[thatskinnyguy (1129515)]

Man my productivity would increase in and out of work. My muscles get enough rest sitting in an idle state at my desk for 8 hours a day as it is. It's almost like they get a full-night's rest. If only my brain would stay awake past 2 in the afternoon...

Snortable? What filters?

[daveb (4522)]

Am I the only one who clicked on this carelessly wondering what new snort filters someone was playing with?

The new norm..

[Unlikely_Hero (900172)]

If this works there's a good chance that sleep won't become optional, it will become a dream. Computers promised the same thing, paperless office, more productivity, but they brought their own issues. I love computers, don't get me wrong, but the fact remains that the promise of lots more leisure time was an empty promise.
Free time will be filled with more work to do. In a world where sleep is optional, some people will be willing to work 20 hours a day or more. Slowly, this will become expected.

This tech is here to stay; trying to change that would just be silly. If, as posters above have said, this isn't really a sleep replacement then it's only a matter of time, the tech will come.
Some people will try to call it "unnatural" or "evil", it won't make a difference.
The question is,
how will you react when it happens and you're asked to come in for an 18 hour workday instead of your normal 8-12 to "stay competitive".
Is it that crazy of an idea that maybe people should /relax/ with their freetime instead of adding work?...
*sadly goes off and reads a book*

Fun Facts About Orexin (and possible downsides)

[OG (15008)]

Here are some facts about orexin to supplement the article. It's a neuropeptide that is endogenous in the mamallian brain (probably outside of mammals, but I've never checked). It was discovered about 10 years ago, and the original biological function described for it was increasing feeding, hence the name orexin (although many scientists prefer the name hypocretin). It's also been shown to subserve the reward system in the brain as a modulating agent.

All which leads me to the question, how could this effect eating disorders and addiction? It's been shown that blocking the orexin system decreases relapse to drugs in animal models. Could artificially increasing the levels of orexin in the brain support the development or maintenance of drug abuse? Could it have similar effects on eating? It is interesting (and makes sense) that it only affected drowsy monkeys, as orexin seems to support the maintenance of wakefulness, so it's possible that there's a ceiling effect to orexin. Still, I'd be wary of longterm exposure to non-natural levels.

Wow! It's not cheap

[inicom (81356)]

100 micrograms runs about $120-$150.
1 milligram about $560.

Still, if it works. Think of all the extra billable hours...

Why amphetamines?

[superwiz (655733)]

There is already Provigil which has no effects on metabolism. Its only effect is to remove sleepiness.

Re:

[cheater512 (783349)]

No no no of course pilots arent taking meth while flying.

Its just the military pilots. You know, the ones with nukes strapped to their plane. :D

Re:Pilots on meth?

[by Anonymous Coward]

The amphetamines used by pilots are very slow-acting (by amphetamine standards) so they don't produce quite as much of the "jittery high" that is usually associated with their more common forms. 8+ hours later when the amphetamine pill finally wears off and the pilot is capable of sleeping again he will, if by no other means than running out of fuel, have ended the mission and found a safer place to catch up on the missed sleep. Potent stimulants have been used by combat troops since WWII so various world militaries have presumably become the reigning experts by now on their effects when used in extreme moderation.

The aforementioned controls notwithstanding, I'd much rather have pilots with nukes alert at the end of a 20-hr flight than dozing off. I'll put this into context for my fellow geeks: If you've ever been sleep-deprived at a LAN Party I'm sure you realize how much microsleep can throw off your aim and timing. Now double that no-sleep time, add in stress from the real threat of being shot down, and replace your mouse with the targeting mechanism for a 10-ton precision bomb that really shouldn't end up in the preschool next door (collateral damage?) ;)

Long-haul truckers, on the other hand, have a jittery high from the no-doze and a pretty debilitating crash on its way long before the end of their route. That being said, I like to make the generalization that awake people are universally safer than sleeping people when it comes to controlling large masses of fast-moving metal and even more so when you add combustible/hazardous materials.

Re:

[Scrameustache (459504)]

The amphetamines used by pilots are very slow-acting (by amphetamine standards) so they don't produce quite as much of the "jittery high" that is usually associated with their more common forms. [...] I'd much rather have pilots with nukes alert at the end of a 20-hr flight than dozing off.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/1956983.stm [bbc.co.uk]

mourning at a ceremony for the four soldiers killed by US "friendly fire" in Afghanistan. A US F-16 dropped a 227-kilogram bomb on the men while they were taking part in a live-fire training exercise near Kandahar.

Re:

[pembo13 (770295)]

History is filled with armies fueled by foreign chemicals that may be label as "drugs". I'm just a little sadder to know that apparently so much effort is still going into war (and I consider myself to be all for violence).

To Be Specific...

[Obyron (615547)]

Sorry, but I'm a drug/organic chem geek.

The amphetamine in the "Go Pills" used by the USAF is dextro-amphetamine. This is NOT a derivative of methamphetamine. They are both derivatives of phenethylamine, and belong to that class of drugs. Amphetamine is an acronym of Alpha-Methyl-PHenEThylAMINE (ie: it's a phenethylamine molecule with a methyl group attached at the alpha position). Amphetamine is chiral, meaning that it has a stereocenter: because the molecule exists in 3D space there are two "versions" of it (called "isomers") that have the same atomic makeup, but are turned in different directions, and are thus non-superimposable. Dextroamphetamine is the dextrorotary isomer of regular ol' amphetamine. (The other isomer is called levo-amphetamine.)

This is NOT even remotely the same thing as methamphetamine. Do you know anyone on Adderall for ADHD? They are on dexamphetamine. Adderall is a mixture of both isomers of the amphetamine molecule (called a "racemic mixture"). Remember that seemingly minor changes in structure can cause a drug to have vastly different effects. The fact that the amphetamines are stimulants is something of an anomaly, since they're part of the larger class of Phenethylamines, and most PEAs are actually psychedelics (including drugs like MDMA, mescaline, MDMCat, MDA, and the 2C and DOx classes of "research" psychedelics).

I just want to counter any assumption people might take from this post that Air Force pilots are flying around jacked up to the gills on meth, fiending for a hit from the pipe, and screaming about the spiders crawling underneath their skin. Methamphetamine is the scary, back alley, black sheep cousin of the amphetamine family; similar to how heroin (diacetylmorphine) is the scary, back alley, black sheep cousin of morphine or fentanyl (80 times stronger than morphine, and not uncommonly used in epidurals during childbirth). As the parent suggests, there isn't anything dangerous in an expertly trained pilot taking dexamphetamine at a reasonable dose under medical supervision. If there is, there are thousands of college students out there popping Adderall illegally to study for exams because it intensifies concentration who would probably like to know about it! Methamphetamine, however, as I'm sure you've all seen on the news, is an entirely different animal...

This isn't so much a reply to the parent as a clarification of a lot of the "USAF pilots are taking meth!" posts I've seen in this thread. It's just not the same thing.

Re:

[nacturation (646836)]

Being able to work all night, then "Catch up" on my sleep while driving to all day classes would be awesome.

I don't think others on the road would appreciate you sleeping while driving to your classes.