Sleeping Pills and Dementia
A recent study done at the University of California, San Francisco has shown that certain drugs like benzos, antidepressants and Ambien may limit your brain’s ability to think clearly. They also found that taking these medications can lead to a higher chance of getting dementia, especially for people with white skin. Also, the number and types of drugs taken are important in comparison to how much risk it would give someone.
Previous research has shown that black people are more likely to develop Alzheimer’s – a common form of dementia – than white people. Scientists have also noticed differences in the risk factors and how the disease affects them too. Recently, the final report was published in a medical journal called Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease.
3,000 people over the age of 74 joined a study called “Health, Aging and Body Composition.” They were not living in nursing homes and were followed for an average of nine years. 42% of them were black while 58% of them were white.
In the study, 20% of people ended up developing dementia. White people who “often” or “almost always” took sleeping pills had a 79% bigger chance of getting dementia compared to those who “never” or “rarely” used them. With the Black participants (who didn’t take as many sleeping pills), frequent users and non-users both had an equal amount of risk for getting dementia.
Risk of Dementia Based on Race
Yue Leng, an expert from the Weill Institute for Neurosciences and UCSF Department of Psychiatry, stated that differences in a person’s financial status can lead to different chances of getting dementia. It is possible that richer people with access to sleep medications have a higher resistance to dementia due to having better brain health. It is also plausible that some types of sleep medications are more useful than others when it comes to avoiding dementia.
The researchers discovered that whites are more likely to take sleep medications than blacks. Specifically, they found that 7.7% of whites took the medication often, five to fifteen times a month or practically always, sixteen times a month or even daily, while only 2.7% of blacks did so. Additionally, whites were almost twice as likely to use benzodiazepines–medications like Halcion, Dalmane and Restoril–for insomnia problems.
White people were 10 times more likely to take trazodone, an antidepressant that is also sometimes used as a sleep aid. They were also 7 times more likely than others to take “Z-drugs” such as Ambien, which helps you relax and fall asleep.
However, experts advise that if you struggle with sleeping, then you should be careful before taking any medicines for it.
The doctor said that the first step for treating sleep issues is to figure out what type of problem the patient has. Sometimes a special test is needed if it might be sleep apnea. If insomnia is diagnosed, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT-i) is the usual treatment given first. Medication like melatonin could be tried as an alternative but we don’t know for sure if there are any long-term side effects yet.
The article, “Race Differences in the Association Between Sleep Medication Use and Risk of Dementia” was written by Yue Leng, Katie L. Stone and Kristine Yaffe and appears in the journal “Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease”. Kristine Yaffe and Katie L. Stone both help study about dementia at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) department of psychiatry as well as his research institute at the California Pacific Medical Center. Their published results are meant to help figure out an association between sleep disturbance medications and risk for developing dementia across different races.
The UCSF Claude D. Pepper Older Americans Independence Center provided research support and was funded by the National Institute on Aging. Dr. Yue Leng is also supported by the NIA with a special R00 AG056598 grant. More information about this can be found online.
