THE ESSENTIAL
- Nearly 37% of French people suffer from sleep or waking disorders, and 20 to 30% from insomnia, according to Inserm.
- The use of sleeping pills has increased in France since the Covid health crisis, according to a report by the National Health Insurance Fund and the National Medicines Safety Agency.
Taking a sleeping pill is a small gesture that is far from trivial. Indeed, they cause side effects such as addiction, falls and memory problems, indicates theNational Medicines Safety Agency (ANSM).
Sleeping pills also have a deleterious effect on cognition in older people and this may vary by ethnic origin, according to researchers at the University of California-San Francisco.
Age-related sleep disorders lead to the consumption of sleeping pills
In their studythey reveal that taking sleeping pills does indeed increase the risk of dementia in older Caucasians, who are 3 times more likely to use sleeping pills compared to other ethnicities.
With age, sleep changes and nights are shorter, awakenings are more frequent, sleep can be split over the day… and the prescription of sleeping pills is often the only solution offered, which has a real impact on cognition. .
The authors analyzed about 3,000 older adults without dementia who were not living in nursing homes. All of these people were part of the study Health, Aging and Body Compositionand the researchers followed them for an average of nine years.
The average age of the participants was 74 years old, 42% were black while 58% were Caucasian. During the study, 20% of these participants developed dementia.
Taking sleeping pills significantly increases the risk of dementia
The white participants who were taking “often” or “almost always“sleeping pills had a 79% higher risk of developing dementia compared to those who did not take them”never” or “rarely“.
Among black participants in particular, in whom overall sleeping pill use was significantly lower, frequent users appeared no more likely to develop dementia than those who completely abstained or rarely used sleeping pills, the authors report.
“Differences can be attributed to socioeconomic status“says the study’s first author, Yue Leng, PhD, from the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at UCSF and the Weill Institute for Neurosciences.”Black participants who have access to sleep medication may be a select group with high socioeconomic status and, therefore, greater cognitive reserve, making them less likely to suffer from dementia.”
Certain therapies are recommended for sleep disorders
It’s also possible that some sleep medications have been linked to a higher risk of dementia than others. Taking sleeping pills should in any case remain exceptional and other solutions exist to effectively treat sleep disorders in the long term. “The first step is to determine the type of sleep problems that patients suffer from. A sleep test may be needed if sleep apnea is a possibility“, says Dr. Leng.”If insomnia is diagnosed, the cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-i) is the first-line treatment. If medication is to be used, melatonin might be a safer option, but we need more evidence to understand its long-term impact on health..”