A treatment combining a tablet that lowers blood pressure with about 40 minutes on a vibrating mattress appears to help the brain clear away certain proteins linked to dementia. Developed by researchers based in Finland, the method is designed to stimulate the brain’s natural waste removal machinery while a person remains awake.

The brain relies on the glymphatic system to remove toxins, metabolic byproducts, and harmful proteins that accumulate over time. This internal sewage system operates constantly, but its waste clearing activity is most effective during sleep.

Researchers behind the latest study wanted to determine whether they could activate this machinery without requiring participants to sleep. Their goal was to develop a treatment that could reproduce some of the restorative effects associated with sleeping.

Earlier work by the team had shown that reducing blood pressure in mice can help the animals flush cerebrospinal fluid. Separate research found that vibrating the body activates Piezo1, a protein in the walls of brain blood vessels that responds to motion.

Piezo1 activation causes those blood vessels to dilate and constrict more strongly. This action helps move waste fluid away from brain cells through the glymphatic system, providing the researchers with a second possible way to enhance clearance.

The Finnish scientists combined the two ideas into a single experimental treatment. Participants placed a nitroglycerin tablet beneath the tongue to widen blood vessels and lower blood pressure, then rested on a vibrating mattress for around 40 minutes.

The treatment was tested in 28 healthy people. During the process, researchers measured participants’ blood proteins, brain activity, and blood flow in real time.

Following treatment, several potentially problematic proteins appeared at increased levels in the bloodstream. These included beta-amyloid 40 and 42, along with GFAP proteins, suggesting that they had been moved out of the brain more efficiently.

“The results suggest that harmful proteins were cleared from the brain more efficiently than usual,” lead researcher Dr Johanna Tuunanen at the University of Oulu said in a statement.

“The effect largely resembled the physiological changes we have previously observed during sleep. This makes the finding particularly interesting as a way of enhancing the brain’s own clearance mechanisms,” Tuunanen added.

The treatment did not produce the same result for every protein examined. Levels of larger proteins, including neurofilament-light and p-tau181, did not change, indicating that protein size may influence how effectively the method works.

Those unchanged levels suggest that the approach might be less effective against proteins that are larger or have become more solidified. The findings therefore point to a potentially important limit alongside the encouraging signs of increased clearance.

The researchers also stressed that the study was small and involved healthy participants without dementia. As a result, it does not directly establish whether the treatment can protect people against Alzheimer’s or provide benefits to patients who already have memory impairment.

Still, the findings suggest the technique may have the potential to reduce the burden of beta-amyloid in the brain. In theory, that could help lower Alzheimer’s risk, although further research involving relevant patients is needed.

“We can now also remove proteins while they are still soluble, before they form solid deposits. This is extremely important, as removing proteins from the brain once they have formed solid deposits in tissue may be virtually impossible,” said Dr Vesa Kiviniemi at the University of Oulu.

“The next step is to investigate what benefits the treatment might offer patients with early-stage memory impairment," he said. The researchers hope to conduct another trial involving patients who are displaying early signs of dementia, and the current study is published in Nature Communications.