A new study has suggested that sleep may help Alzheimer’s patients. Researchers from the Washington University School of Medicine reached at this conclusion after carrying out a study on three groups of fruit flies.

Fruits flies were chosen as their brains regulate sleep in a way akin to humans. In all the three groups, the researchers disabled a gene, so that different memory problems can occur. Every new memory problem created a problem with the flies’ ability to make new memories.

In one of the groups, the disabled gene led to the development of memory condition that was similar to Alzheimer’s disease. In another group, flies faced problems with regard to brain connections that encode memories. In the last group, files were having too many connections.

In the next phase, the researchers using one of three methods - stimulating brain cells involved in sleep, increasing the production of a protein linked with sleep or administration of a drug that simulates the activity of a chemical messenger involved in sleep, they increased the amount of sleep of all the three groups of flies.

Over a two-day period, the flies had received an extra sleep of three to four hours each day. The research published in Current Biology unveiled that the additional sleep helped restoring the ability of the groups to make new memories, regardless of the technique used to generate the extra sleep.

The research said that the extra sleep could not bring back the missing or damaged genes. Now, the next step for researchers would be to assess the exact association between sleep and memory problems.

Stephane Dissel, a senior scientist at Shaw’s laboratory, said that sleep tries to cure all the physiological problems. Sleep affects the brain cell connection responsible for encoding important memories.