It turns out that common sleeping pills reduce the protein that causes Alzheimer's disease, suggesting the possibility of becoming a new countermeasure against dementia



Research results have been reported that taking

suvorexant (trade name Belsomra) , one of the common sleeping pills, can suppress the accumulation of proteins that are said to cause Alzheimer's disease .

Suvorexant Acutely Decreases Tau Phosphorylation and Aβ in the Human CNS - Lucey - Annals of Neurology - Wiley Online Library
https://doi.org/10.1002/ana.26641



Sleeping pill reduces levels of Alzheimer's proteins – Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis

https://medicine.wustl.edu/news/sleeping-pill-reduces-levels-of-alzheimers-proteins/



Alzheimer's Breakthrough? Common Sleeping Pill Reduces Levels of Disease Proteins

https://scitechdaily.com/alzheimers-breakthrough-common-sleeping-pill-reduces-levels-of-disease-proteins/



Alzheimer's disease, the most common form of dementia, begins when an abnormal protein called

amyloid beta accumulates in the brain as plaques. And when amyloid accumulates over a long period of time, a harmful substance called tau protein begins to become filaments and become entangled in brain cells. Around this time, patients with Alzheimer's disease begin to show cognitive symptoms such as memory loss.

In healthy people, waste products in the brain are removed during sleep, but in Alzheimer's disease, sleep is disturbed, resulting in sleep deprivation, which further accelerates the progression of symptoms. This study was conducted while seeking ways to break this vicious cycle.



In this study, a research team at the St. Louis Washington University School of Medicine recruited 38 subjects aged 45 to 65 without cognitive impairment and conducted an experiment to take sleeping pills and sleep for two nights. Participants took either suvorexant, a common drug for insomnia, or a placebo and slept in the lab. Then, the research team collected a small amount of cerebrospinal fluid from the participants every 2 hours for 36 hours from 1 hour before administering the drug, and how the levels of amyloid and tau protein changed by taking sleeping pills and sleeping. We measured

Measurements showed that the brains of people who received high doses of suvorexant had 10-20% lower levels of amyloid than those who took the placebo drug, and levels of hyperphosphorylated tau protein, a form of tau protein. was found to decrease by 10-15%. However, this effect was not seen in people taking low doses of suvorexant.

Twenty-four hours after the first dose, hyperphosphorylated tau protein levels were elevated in the high-dose group, but amyloid levels remained low. A second dose of suvorexant on the second evening confirmed that the levels of both proteins decreased again.



'If you can lower your amyloid levels every day, the amyloid plaques in your brain will decrease over time,' said Brendan Lucy, of the St. Louis-Washington University School of Medicine. If we can suppress the phosphorylation of tau protein, it could potentially reduce tau protein entanglement and prevent neuronal death.' .

This study is positioned as a small preliminary study because it had only 38 subjects and the experimental period was only two nights. In addition, the ``amyloid hypothesis'' is now under scrutiny because of suspicions of fabrication in the paper that led to the belief that amyloid is the leading cause of Alzheimer's disease. Caution is required.

Possibility of image fabrication in important papers related to the cause of Alzheimer's disease - GIGAZINE



'Since this study is a small proof-of-concept study, it would be premature to use suvorexant as a reason for people worried about Alzheimer's disease to start taking suvorexant,' Lucy said. We don't know if it's effective, and if so at what doses, but the results are very encouraging. 'We have evidence that it affects the levels of proteins that are important in driving disease.'

in Science, Posted by log1l_ks