http://medicalxpress.com/ en-us Medical Xpress internet news portal provides the latest news on Health and Medicine. An experimental sleeping pill from US drug company Merck is effective at helping people fall and stay asleep, according to reviewers at the US Food and Drug Administration, which could soon approve the new drug. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-05-pill-poised.html Medications Tue, 21 May 2013 17:50:01 EST news288376487 (HealthDay)—Health staff at nursing homes often give patients sleeping pills to help them sleep, but a new study suggests that a certain class of medications may put patients at raised risk for hip fractures. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-03-aids-hip-fracture-nursing-homes.html Health Mon, 04 Mar 2013 16:59:52 EST news281638786 Exercise can affect your sleep. The results of the National Sleep Foundation's 2013 Sleep in America poll show a compelling association between exercise and better sleep. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-03-national-foundation-poll-key-good.html Health Mon, 04 Mar 2013 09:20:01 EST news281608796 Researchers want to know whether a sleeping pill reduces suicidal thoughts in depressed patients with insomnia. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-01-explores-pills-insomniac-suicidal-thoughts.html Psychology & Psychiatry Tue, 22 Jan 2013 10:16:38 EST news278072191 (HealthDay)—The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced Thursday that it is asking manufacturers of sleep medications containing zolpidem—including Ambien—to lower the recommended doses and to provide more safety information to patients. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-01-fda-requires-doses-medications.html Medications Thu, 10 Jan 2013 11:50:01 EST news277040406 Half of the benefit of taking sleeping pills comes from the placebo effect, according to a major new study published in the British Medical Journal. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-12-pills-benefits-placebo-effect.html Medications Tue, 18 Dec 2012 16:01:03 EST news275068840 Witnessing or being on the receiving end of bullying at work heightens the risk of employees being prescribed antidepressants, sleeping pills, and tranquillisers, finds research published in BMJ Open. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-12-workplace-bullying-ups-prescriptions-anxiety.html Psychology & Psychiatry Wed, 12 Dec 2012 18:30:04 EST news274554507 Commonly prescribed sleeping pills/sedatives may increase the risk of contracting pneumonia by as much as 50% and increase the risk of dying from it, suggests research published online in the journal Thorax. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-12-widely-sedativessleeping-pills-linked-fatal.html Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes Wed, 05 Dec 2012 18:30:02 EST news273947791 Common medication to treat insomnia, anxiety, itching or allergies can have a negative impact on memory or concentration in the elderly, according to Dr. Cara Tannenbaum, Research Chair at the Institut universitaire de gériatrie de Montréal (IUGM, Montreal Geriatric University Institute) and Associate Professor of Medicine and Pharmacy at the University of Montreal (UdeM). Up to ninety percent of people over the age of 65 take at least one prescription medication. Eighteen percent of people in this age group complain of memory problems and are found to have mild cognitive deficits. Research suggests there may be a link between the two. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-11-memory-medicine-cabinet.html Medications Tue, 06 Nov 2012 03:15:33 EST news271394113 Chances are, your medicine cabinet contains some pills that are past their expiration date. You might even have some pain relievers, some cough syrup or some sleeping pills that were purchased back when Richard Nixon was in the White House. But you can't seem to throw them away because you suspect they might still be OK to take. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-10-drugs-fine-years-expire.html Medications Tue, 09 Oct 2012 18:08:14 EST news269024883 Nonprescription medications are just as likely a cause of poisoning as prescription drugs, according to a new study by Timothy Wiegand, M.D. from the University of Rochester Medical Center in the US and colleagues. Their work, which analyzes the data from the second annual report of the Toxicology Investigators Consortium (ToxIC), is published online in Springer's Journal of Medical Toxicology. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-10-nonprescription-medication-abuse-underestimated.html Medications Thu, 04 Oct 2012 13:27:12 EST news268575968 Insomnia sufferers in England could have greater access to successful treatment, thanks to a training programme developed as part of trials of Cognitive Behaviour Therapy for Insomnia (CBTi), funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-08-nhs-therapists-insomniacs.html Health Fri, 17 Aug 2012 07:29:02 EST news264407321 Obesity appears to significantly increase the risk of death tied to sleeping pills, nearly doubling the rate of mortality even among those prescribed 18 or fewer pills in a year, researchers reported Friday. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-03-obesity-death-tied-pills.html Sleep apnea Fri, 16 Mar 2012 16:11:11 EST news251133062 People are relying on sleeping pills more than ever to get a good night's rest, but a new study by Scripps Clinic researchers links the medications to a 4.6 times higher risk of death and a significant increase in cancer cases among regular pill users. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-02-higher-death-pills.html Health Mon, 27 Feb 2012 18:30:03 EST news249576380 Nursing home residents with dementia who use average doses of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) are three times more likely to have an injurious fall than similar people who don't use these drugs. The association can be seen in people who use low doses of SSRIs and the risk increases as people take higher doses. The results are published in the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-01-nursing-home-residents-dementia-antidepressants.html Health Thu, 19 Jan 2012 04:40:03 EST news246168702 The use of anti-depressant drugs in England has soared by 28 percent in the past three years, coinciding with the country's fall into recession and the global economic crisis, new figures showed Friday. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-12-anti-depressant-soars-england-linked-recession.html Psychology & Psychiatry Fri, 30 Dec 2011 06:27:43 EST news244448852 Men who have lost their partner to cancer and who are still single four to five years after their loss run a far greater risk of developing mental illness than those who have managed to find a new partner, reveals a unique study of 691 Swedish widowers carried out at the Sahlgrenska Academy. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-12-relationship-important-mental-health-widowers.html Psychology & Psychiatry Tue, 13 Dec 2011 16:23:19 EST news243015792 Insomnia affects around 23 percent of US workers, and brings a national cost for the sleeping disorder at $63.2 billion, a study showed Wednesday. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-08-insomnia-affects-percent-workers.html Health Wed, 31 Aug 2011 17:03:49 EST news234028995