There have been several articles in news releases recently warning that ‘a study showed that sleeping pills were linked to early death… Commonly used sleeping pills, or “hypnotics”, such as temazepam and zolpidem, which are prescribed for short-term insomnia, are associated with more than a fourfold risk of death.

The large-scale study, by the Scripps Clinic Viterbi Family Sleep Centre in California, found that even at a relatively low 18 doses a year those given the pills were 3.5 times more likely to be dead at the end of the study compared with those who were not prescribed them. Those on higher doses were five times more likely to have died.

While this study did not show the drugs actually caused the deaths, researchers suggested sleeping pills could shorten life because they are associated   with depression – which can trigger suicide, as well as impair motor and cognitive skills, leading to accidents.

[From an unnamed article in the Sydney Morning Herald, cited by The Week, 9-15 March 2012, p. 14}.

PS. Another article I saw somewhere associates sleeping tablets with memory-loss. Anyone know a reputable source for that? I’ll add more information to this article as it comes in…