Battleangel

I remember reading about it in Nature last month but I must have dozed off and forgot all about it. At least until I had to go get a new pack of caffeine today. Nature noted that Alertness drug arouses fears about ‘lifestyle’ misuse but I am less sceptical. Considering the misuse of caffeine and its rather unpleasant effects, I’d give CX717 a spin.

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. The drug also shortened response times, suggesting that “CX717 also facilitated attentional processes related to speed of responding on successful trials.”

When the monkeys were subjected 30-36 hours of sleep deprivation, average performance accuracy dropped to 63 percent, which was restored to 84 percent after CX717 treatment.

The distinct shifts in EEG recordings and changes in brain scans following sleep deprivation were also reversed by drug treatment.

“The fact that (compounds like) CX717 can temporarily alleviate the effects of prolonged periods of sleep deprivation…indicates their potential applicability to many circumstances in which human performance is compromised by extensive sleep loss,” Deadwyler and his associates suggest.

They add that these new agents may be preferable to psychostimulants, caffeine or the relatively new anti-sleepiness drug Provigil, because these “may be limited due to their potential for addiction and/or their potent stimulant actions, which can distort cognitive and sensory processes at doses required to counteract the effects of sleep deprivation.”

So, in fact, CX717 improved upon the performance of monkeys even during normal alert conditions. And even after severe sleep deprivation, the augmented result would spike to well beyond what could be expected from a normal test subject in the normal alert condition with no drug administered. Which makes it potentially so much more than just a stay-awake-pill.CX717 AMPAKINE Compound as a Potential New Treatment for Cognitive Impairments …

AMPAKINE drugs acting through the AMPA-receptor are designed to up-regulate glutamate, the principal excitatory neurotransmitter in the brain. Deterioration of AMPA-receptor mediated brain activity in patients following sleep deprivation and in Alzheimer’s and other neurological and psychiatric disorders associated with loss of memory and cognition. AMPAKINE drugs may also increase the amount growth factors in the brain, which, in turn, may help treat the underlying causes of these various conditions.

AMPAKINE drugs act to increase the strength of signals at key connections between brain cells. The weakening or loss of these connections is thought to be responsible for memory difficulties and/or disorders associated with both neurological and psychological diseases including schizophrenia, Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI), Alzheimer’s disease, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), and depression.

I don’t see that people choosing to take CX717 is the problem here. Remember the history of caffeine. No once chose to get addicted and it certainly was no middle / upper class trendy trend that popularized it. Rather, as recent evidence suggests, it was ordinary people struggling to stay awake and keep up with the first industrialization and the sometimes dangerous work during long hours at the production line. If that is a ‘lifestyle’ misuse then I too am worried. And needless to say, after Alzheimers patients, the next group to line up for testing was the Pentagon.

I’ll take a batch as well.