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Common sleeping pills linked to early death

Higher doses also linked to increased risk of cancer

People who take commonly prescribed sleeping pills may be four timesmore likelyto die prematurely, according to the latest research. High doses of sleeping pills

also increased risk of cancer by about a third, said the researchers from the

Scripps Clinic Viterbi Family Sleep Centre, California,and the Jackson Hole Centrefor Preventative Medicine, Wyoming.The study, published in the journal BMJ Open, analyzed data on more than

10,500 men and womenliving in California who took a range of sleeping pills foran average of 2.5 years between 2002and 2007. Patient survival was thencompared with that of over 23,500 people matched for age,sex and lifestyle butwho had not been prescribed sleeping pills over the same period.The drugs prescribed included benzodiazepines,such as temazepam anddiazepam; non-benzodiazepines,such as zolpidem, zoplicone, andzaleplon;barbiturates and sedative antihistamines.

People prescribed up to 18 doses of pills a year were more than 3.5 times aslikely to die as those prescribed none, the study found.But those prescribedbetween 18 and 132 doses of pills were more than four times aslikely to do diecompared with people who had not been prescribed sleeping pills.The risk of dying prematurely increased with increasing doses of sleeping pills,as

those taking the most doses (132+ per year) were more than five times as likely to

dieas those prescribed none, the researchers found.

Those taking the highest number of doses were also 35 per cent more likely to bediagnosedwith any type of cancer, which could not be explained by pre-existingpoor health.Although the findings showed a statistical association between

taking sleeping pillswith an increased risk of death, it still did not establish a causeof death, the researchers said.They said it might be time to "reconsider whether even the short term use of

hypnotics,as given qualified approval in National Institute for Health and ClinicalExcellence [NICE] guidance,is sufficiently safe."

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Some 2.8 million prescriptions were dispensed for temazepam and nearly 5.3

millionfor zopiclone in England in 2010.Malcolm Lader, professor of clinical psychopharmacology at the Institute of

Psychiatry at King's College London,said people should not panic as a result of

the findings, as more studies were needed."I agree that these drugs do have problems but I find some of these results quite

difficult to accept. The main one is that with 18 doses a year you have three times

the mortality - that's quite incrediblebecause you would have people droppinglike flies.The study needs to be replicated in a different sample and I thinkweneed to holdjudgment until we have further studies."What we don't want, is people stopping sleeping tablets

and then going through a very disturbing period of

insomnia.

"People should discuss this with their GP but should not

under any circumstances stop taking their medication."