Yo-El Ju

But really, for any sleep drug, we want people to be taking it on a temporary basis as short as possible.

I think that...

permanent, you know, never-ending daily use of a drug to improve sleep, I don't think that's healthy.

Sure.

So DORAS, which stands for dual orexin receptor antagonist, they came on the market a few years ago.

There's now three of them, suvorexin, lemborexin, and daridorexin.

And these all work by blocking the action of orexin.

Orexin is also called hypocretin.

When hypocretin is low, that's what causes narcolepsy.

So orexin is a wake-promoting pathway.

So it's a new class of sleep drug in that all the prior ones, basically, they increase sleep.

pathways, whereas this was the first one to tamp down a wake-promoting pathway.

So it's a new class of drug in the past few years.

You know, it does have objectively measured improvements in total sleep time and sleep efficiency compared to placebo.

And, you know, they've been available.

I think the uptake has been kind of slow because they are expensive.

And, you know, in the U.S., we are very limited by what insurance covers.

And it is unfortunate that, you know, while drugs are on patent, the drugs can be out of reach even for people with good insurance.

You know, they've been on the market and, you know, I think it really kind of depends on the person, whether they respond better or compared to, you know, any of the other sleep drugs or other insomnia treatment methods.

But I have noticed that, you know, it tends to help people kind of say, I can't turn my mind off, you know, if that's the issue, you know.