Drugs can reset body clock to ease psychiatric disorders
By IANSTuesday, August 24, 2010
LONDON - It is possible to treat a host of health problems by resetting the body clock with the help of drugs.
“This might include some psychiatric diseases and certain circadian sleep disorders,” said Andrew Loudon, study author from the University of Manchester in Britain.
“It can be really devastating for our brains and bodies when something happens which disrupts the natural rhythm of our body clocks,” Loudon said.
“This can be a result of a disease or as a consequence of jet lag or frequent changes between day and night shifts,” he said, according to the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“We’ve shown that it’s possible to use drugs to synchronise the body clock of a mouse and so it may also be possible to use similar drugs to treat a whole range of health problems associated with disruptions of circadian rhythms,” he said.
“We’ve discovered that we can control one of the key molecules involved in setting the speed at which the clock ticks and in doing so we can actually kick it into a new rhythm,” he added.
Most living creatures and plants have an internal body timing system called the circadian clock.
There is a complex system of molecules present in every cell that drives rhythm in everything from sleep in mammals to flowering in plants.
