![]() Patients who were prescribed sleeping pills were at least three to five times more likely to have died during the study than were the patients not prescribed sleeping pills. The researchers looked at 10,529 primary care patients who were prescribed sleeping pills between 20 and compared the health of each of them to at least two very similar patients without such prescriptions who were the same sex, ethnicity, marital status, smoking status, and had similar health conditions, alcohol use and BMI (which measures if a person is overweight). The patients were followed for 2.5 years on average, and were from a Pennsylvania clinic that serves a mainly low-income population. Author Dr. Daniel Kripke estimates that these popular sleep medications could cause 320,000 to 507,000 deaths in just one year. However, the use of these drugs may take a nosedive in light of the findings of a study published in the prestigious British Medical Journal. Led by researchers at the Scripps Clinic Viterbi Family Sleep Center in California, the study shows that people who take these drugs are significantly more likely to be diagnosed with cancer or to die within the next two and a half years than people who don’t take them. While prescription sleep medications are big business - more than $41 billion/year in the U.S. many people with trouble sleeping turn to over-the-counter antihistamines such as Tylenol PM and Benadryl. When we hear “sleeping pills,” most of us think of prescription drugs such as Ambien (generic name zolpidem), Restoril (temazepam), and Lunesta (eszopiclone). Brandel France de Bravo, MPH, Kousha Mohseni, MS, National Center for Health Research
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