Common sleeping pill Ambien helps improve mice recovery from stroke to less than a month
A drug already approved by the US Food and Drug Administration to treat insomnia has been found to boost the recovery of mice from strokes. Researchers have found that the drug Zolpidem, also known as Ambien, has significantly helped patients recover within a few days of treatment even if it was delivered in low doses.
Researchers from the Stanford University School of Medicine said the study is the first to show the effect of Ambien to enhance recovery from stroke. Currently, no effective treatments aside from physical therapy are available to help patients.
However, the study, published in the journal Brain, shows that Ambien has the potential to improve recovery by working with a type of nerve-cell signalling that has a key role in patient recovery. The sleeping pill was found to enhance the signalling of a neurotransmitter called GABA, a substance that allows nerve cells signal to one another.
In the study, the Stanford team induced mice with two different types of strokes, one that severely damages sensory ability and the other that impairs movement. The mice were then placed on a treatment with Ambien or a solution without the drug.
The animal models were monitored through sensory ability and motor coordination tests. Results show that mice treated with Ambien recovered at a faster rate compared with the control group. The mice treated with the solution without Ambien took about a month to fully recover, while the Ambien-treated mice recovered within a few days of treatment.
However, the researchers noted that further studies in other animal models and more experiments with different dose sizes and timing are needed to test Ambien’s capacity as a stroke-recovery agent before conducting human clinical trials.
"Before this study, the thinking in the field was that GABA signalling after a stroke was detrimental," said Dr Gary Steinberg, a professor and chair of neurosurgery at the Stanford University, in a press release. "But now we know that if it's the right kind of GABA signalling, it's beneficial. And we've identified an FDA-approved drug that decisively promotes the beneficial signalling."
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