Millions of Americans turn to sleeping pills or some sort of sedative to help them get better sleep each evening. In addition, 11 percent of middle-aged women across the country take anti-anxiety medication. New research published last week shows a correlation between taking sleeping pills and anti-anxiety medication to having a higher risk of getting Alzheimer’s disease.
In a report published in The BMJ, 1,796 people with Alzheimer’s disease and 7,184 controls were tested. Those people tested who have used these types of drugs showed a 51 percent higher risk of getting a memory impairing disease. People who took the drugs more than 180 days had their risk almost doubled.
Studies previously focused on the effect these types of drugs have on those people who used them in the short term. Those previous studies showed a clear link between these drugs and memory and cognition problems. Scientists in this study followed the participants for six years and showed that the link was just as strong even after a significantly longer period of observation. After scientists adjusted for potential confounding effects on Alzheimer’s rates such as blood pressure, depression, and heart disease, the link still remained strong.
Scientists wanted to rule out that this link was happening the other way around—that Alzheimer’s disease was causing a rise in insomnia and anxiety. In order to eliminate that as a possibility, scientists focused on people who had been prescribed sleeping and anti-anxiety medication for more than five years before they were diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. “We believe that the likelihood that the results are mainly driven by reverse causation is low,” said Sophie Billioti de Gage, a PhD student at INSERM, University of Bordeaux, who followed the participants for six years.
To learn more about this study, and story, please click here.
