Researchers Find Insomnia Pill can help fast Recovery from Stroke

According to a team of researchers, Zolpidem, also known by the trade name Ambien, has been popularly used to treat insomnia. But recently, researchers noted that the drug can prove very effective in helping person to recover from stroke.

Zolpidem is a new class of sleeping pills that are sold under the brands Stilnoct and Edluar in the UK and Ambien in the US. The drug is given to around 750,000 NHS patients each year.

Zolpidem works by reducing the electrical activity of the brain. Researchers at Stanford University School of Medicine during a recent study on lab mice found that the mice, which had strokes were able to recover quite fast if they were given low doses of the pill.

This prompted the scientists to think that the drug can help the brain to rewire itself after the stroke has caused the damage.

According to experts, a stroke is a life-threatening condition that occurs when blood supply to a part of the brain is cut off. The faster someone is treated, the less damage is caused to his/her body, which can cause brain injury, disability and possibly death.

As per record, every year almost 110,000 people in England have a stroke. Stroke is also the third largest cause of death, after heart disease and cancer. If stroke are left untreated after a few days tissue death continues to spread to adjacent brain regions.

The brain slowly starts to rewire itself and substituting new neural connections for those destroyed by the stroke, said researchers. At least 90% of all the recovery a stroke patient takes place within three to six months.