Local Study Finds Higher Death Risk With Sleeping Pills

You have either taken or know someone who has taken a sleeping pill to get a good night of rest. But a new study by Scripps Clinic researchers links sleeping pills to a 4.6 times higher risk of death.

The results of the study, which was published by online journal BMJ Open late last month, also found a significant increase in cancer cases among regular pill users.

“What our study shows is that sleeping pills are hazardous to your health and might cause death by contributing to the occurrence of cancer, heart disease and other ailments,” said study author Daniel F. Kripke, M.D. of the Viterbi Family Sleep Center in a statement. The center is located on the Scripps Green Hospital campus in La Jolla.

According to the study, eight of the most commonly used sleeping drugs were associated with increased hazards of mortality and cancer, according to Scripps Clinic. Those drugs included Ambien and Restoril.

Study participants who took sleeping pills were matched with control patients.

“We tried every practical strategy to make these associations go away, thinking that they could be due to use by people and more health problems, but no matter what we did the association with higher mortality held,” said co-author Robert D. Langer, M.D., M.P.H. of the Jackson Hole Center Preventative Medicine in Jackson, Wyo.

There have been several notable deaths linked to improper use of sleeping medications in recent year including Heath Ledger and Anna Nicole Smith.

The report goes on to find that even for patients that were prescribed one to 18 sleeping pills per year, the risk of death was 3.6 times higher than among similar participants that had not taken the medications.

Lastly the study found that rates of new cancer were 35 percent higher among patients who were prescribed at least 132 hypnotic doses a year, or approximately one every three days, compared to those who did not take the drugs.

The study consisted of 10,531 sleeping pill users who were prescribed the medications for an average of 2.5 years and 23,674 control participants. The information was collected from Jan. 1, 2002 to Sept. 30, 2006.

Co-author Lawrence E. Kline, D.O., who is the medical director of the Viterbi Family Sleep Center, said he hopes the research will prompt additional research in this area.

Scripps Clinic reported that this segment of the pharmaceutical industry expanded by 23 percent in the U.S. from 2006 to 2010 and generated $2 billion in sales.