Taking sleeping pills frequently can increase the risk of premature death more than five-fold a new study has warned.

The study published in the British Medical Journal Open found that patients who even take fewer than 18 pills a year more likely to die early than those not on
medication.

The higher the dose the greater the risk. And those on higher doses also have an increased risk of cancer said the researchers at the Jackson Hole Centre for Preventive Medicine in Wyoming and the Scripps Clinic Viterbi Family Sleep Centre in California.

The commonly prescribed drugs that may raise such

risks included benzodiazepines newer sedative hypnotics zolpidem zopiclone and zaleplon and barbiturates and antihistamines.

However experts said worried patients should not stop taking the pills but talk to their doctors first the Daily Mail reported.

People who take sleeping pills twice a month are nearly four times more likely to die prematurely, a study has found. The researchers said the findings raised serious questions about the safety of sleeping tablets.

The hundreds of thousands of people who use the pills should consider therapies to tackle insomnia instead.

People taking higher doses of the commonly-prescribed temazepam pills, which were dispensed 2.8?million times in England in 2010, were six times more likely to die in the next two-and-a-half years.

People taking the drugs were also more likely to develop cancer. The study, published in the British Medical Journal Open, analysed 10,500 patients on a wide range of sleeping pills.

They compared them with people who were not using the drugs but had a similar way of life and health conditions.

For the drug zolpidem, which was prescribed 733,000 times in England in 2010, the risk of death was 5.7 times higher for those taking them most frequently. The drug zopiclone was prescribed

5.3?million times in England in 2010. It was included in the full analysis but not calculated separately.

The lead author, Dr Daniel Kripke, of the Scripps Clinic, wrote in the British Medical Journal Open: "The meagre benefits of hypnotics [sleeping pills], as critically reviewed by groups without financial interest, would not justify substantial risks. A consensus is developing that cognitive-behavioural therapy of chronic insomnia may be more successful than hypnotics."

Sleeping pills, known as hypnotics, are believed to increase depression and can impair driving skills.

The authors said their findings, together with similar findings in previous studies, should be used by authorities to reassess whether even modest doses of sleeping pills were safe.

Dr Trish Groves, the editor of the journal, said: "Although the authors have not been able to prove that sleeping pills cause premature death, their analyses have ruled out a wide range of other possible factors."

NHS guidelines say zolpidem should be used at the lowest possible dose for a maximum of up to four weeks.

Zaleplon should be used only at the lowest dose and for a maximum of up to two weeks, while temazepam should be taken for a maximum of four weeks. Nina Barnett, a Royal Pharmaceutical Society spokesman on medicines for older persons, said: "This is an important study and although it is unlikely radically to change prescribing in the immediate term, it should raise awareness.

"Patients should not stop taking any prescribed medicines straight away. If you are concerned discuss this with your pharmacist or doctor about other ways of getting help with sleep problems."

Malcolm Lader, professor of clinical psychopharmacology at the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College London, said people should not panic as a result of the findings and stop their medication.

Prof Lader said more work was needed on the research.

"I agree that these drugs do have problems but I find some of these results quite difficult to accept," he said.

"The main one is that with 18 doses a year you have three times the mortality - that's quite incredible because you would have people dropping like flies."

A spokesman for the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency said, "Hypnotics should be used to treat insomnia only when it is severe and use should be restricted to short-term.

"We will consider the results of this latest study and whether it has any implications for current prescribing guidance."

As the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared India polio-free, the Odisha Government on Sunday claimed that it has achieved zero-polio status for fours year on the trot.

Marking the pulse polio immunisation drive, Health Minister Prasanna Acharya said although the State has achieved the zero-polio status for four consecutive years, maintaining it during the years to come is a challenge. He urged families to take their children below five years for polio drop administration.

Acharya kicked off the immunisation drive from the health centre at Unit III. The drive will be conducted across 30 districts in 18,684 centres. The State Government targets to cover 46,56,254 children under the immunisation drive during the three-day period.

Last year, 46,05,670 children below five years were administered polio drops. For this year, the Health department and its allied agencies have deployed 37,368 squads comprising 74,737 workers and 3,737 supervisors.

Eating oranges and grapefruit could cut your risk of stroke, claim researchers.

Both the whole fruit and breakfast juices appear to protect against having a 'brain attack', probably due to their high content of a certain type of antioxidant.

A new study looked at citrus fruit for the first time, rather than a range of fruit and vegetables which have been linked to stroke protection.

The study involved thousands of women taking part in the ongoing Nurses' Health Study in the US, but experts believe the benefits may also apply to men.

Every year in the UK, approximately 120,000 people have a stroke and 20-30 per cent die within a month, while 300,000 people are living with disabilities as a result.

A research team based at Norwich Medical School in the University of East Anglia investigated the strength of protection from flavonoids, a class of antioxidant compounds present in fruits, vegetables, dark chocolate and red wine.

Researchers claim to have developed a new injectable hydrogel which they say could be used to repair tissue damaged by heart attacks.

A team at the University of California, led by Karen Christman, hopes to bring the gel to clinical trials within the next year, the latest edition of `Journal of the American College of Cardiology` reported.


Therapies like the hydrogel would be a welcome development, Christman explained, since there are an estimated 785,000 new heart attack cases in the US each year, with no established treatment for repairing the resulting damage to cardiac tissue.

The hydrogel is made from cardiac connective tissue that is stripped of heart muscle cells through a cleansing process, freeze-dried and milled into powder form, and then liquefied into a fluid that can be easily injected into the heart.

Once it hits body temperature, the liquid turns into a semi-solid, porous gel that encourages cells to repopulate areas of damaged cardiac tissue and to preserve heart function, according to Christman.

The hydrogel forms a scaffold to repair the tissue and possibly provides biochemical signals that prevent further deterioration in the surrounding tissues.

"It helps to promote a positive remodelling-type response, not a pro-inflammatory one in the damaged heart," Christman said in a release by the university.

What`s more, the researchers` experiments show that the gel also can be injected through a catheter, a method that is minimally invasive and does not require surgery or general anaesthesia.

The gel has been found to improve heart function in pigs with cardiac damage, which brings this potential therapy one step closer to humans, Christman said.