Assessing the new sleeping pills

Reported by Susan Aldridge, PhD, medical journalist

A review suggests that new sleeping drugs are effective, but none of them is better than the rest.
There is now a new generation of sleeping tablets which overcome some of the drawbacks of conventional sedatives. A team at the Oregon Evidence-based Practice Center at Oregon Health and Science University now reports on a survey of research on these new drugs, including Sonata, Ambien, Lunesta and Canadian drug Imovane.

They looked at 141 studies and found the drugs are generally effective, but none stand out as being superior to the others. There have not been many head-to-head studies, but Sonata may be better than Ambien at putting people to sleep quickly while those on Ambien seem to sleep for longer and, maybe, have better quality sleep. More research is needed to see which of the individual drugs might work best for subgroups of patients with different types of insomnia.

Source
Oregon Evidence-based Practice Center 9th December 2005

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