Jet lag pill developed that fools body into thinking day is night

Scientists have invented a pill to reset the body clock and end the sleepless misery of millions of nightshift workers, frequent fliers and insomniacs.

The human body is designed to sleep at night and be awake during the day. Disrupting this "circadian" rhythm can cause everything from stress to heart disease and even cancer.

However, an experimental drug created by medical researchers has managed to synchronise blood cells in the body to effectively fool the body into thinking night is day and vice versa.

This could help millions who work nights, for instance, as well as business travellers who jet through time zones and need to change their sleep patterns to remain fresh for meetings.

The tablets have been devised by scientists at Canada's McGill University and the country's specialist Douglas Mental Health University.

They were tested successfully on 16 healthy volunteers put into isolation chambers to have their own circadian rhythms disrupted.

How it works
White blood cells contain biological clocks controlled by a switch deep within the brain, experts told the Journal of FASEB (Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology).

They are synchronised to control the body's reaction to day and night. But the tablets, containing the steroid-based compound glucocorticoid, can effectively reset the settings.

Researcher Dr Diane Boivin said: "Problems adjusting to atypical work schedules are a major issue for society.

"Our previous studies clearly show that desynchronised circadian clocks disrupt the sleep, performance and cardiac parameters of night-shift workers."

Dr Nicolas Cermakian, co-author of the report, said: "Animal studies have shown that our central clock (in the brain) sends signals to the clocks in our other organs.

"Glucocorticoids appear to play a central role in transmitting these signals. We studied the rhythmic expression of clock genes in white blood cells to see how they adjusted in response to glucocorticoids."

The pills are not ready to be released for general use, but they might "open the door to innovative therapies" for those suffering as a result of disrupted sleep patterns, researches added.

Credit: Health Mag.