So sleep aids become safer

New sleeping pills allow for a safer sleep

Many people have problems with their nightly sleep. Patients often resort to sleeping pills. However, such products can have unpleasant side effects. When people take prescription sleeping pills, they tend to be so strong that users do not wake up in the house even with a fire alarm. New medications are supposed to solve this problem now.

Doctors have already warned that users of prescription sleep pills are in danger of not waking up, even with a fire alarm in the house. Researchers at Kagoshima University in Japan, therefore, investigated a new class of so-called hypnotic medications that act like sleeping pills, but wake people up during an emergency. The experts published the results of their study in the English-language journal "Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience".

Sufficient sleep is very important to our health. Not infrequently, people take sleeping pills to fall asleep faster or to sleep through the night. (Image: Rido / fotolia.com)

Half of the subjects did not respond to a fire alarm

If your house burns in the middle of the night, you want to wake up safely and quickly get out of danger. However, in the current investigation, half of the study participants who took prescription sleeping pills continued to sleep despite a fire alarm, although it was as loud as being sucked right next to your bed. Scientists estimate that millions of people taking prescription sleeping pills like Ambien and Halcion would continue to sleep in a fire alarm.

Benzodiazepines suppress various parts of the brain

Benzodiazepines are the most commonly prescribed types of sleeping pills that put the brain in a so-called sleep mode. Unfortunately, these drugs suppress various areas of the human brain. This also includes the area of ​​the brain, which decides on which external information to be respected despite the sleep, such as noises at night.

Benefits of hypnotic sleeping pills

Over the last decade, scientists have developed a new class of hypnotic medications called dual orexin receptor antagonists (DORAs). DORAs have a more targeted effect on the sleep and wake pathways of the brain, providing a safer alternative to benzodiazepines while causing less negative effects. In laboratory mice, animals given benzodiazepine triazolam were more slowly awake compared to mice given DORA-22, the study authors explain. For their examination, the doctors confronted the animals with sounds of a fox, a serious threat to a mouse. Once the danger was over, the mice given DORA-22 slept as fast as the mice given a conventional sleeping pill. All animals fell significantly faster than mice, which were given no sleeping aid at all.

Further research is needed

Now more tests are needed to determine if DORAs in humans are recommended as sleep aids. Since 2014, a DORA named Surovexant has already received regulatory approval in Japan, the US and Australia. High costs and limited clinical trials of Surovexant have hindered deployment, but new types of DORA currently under development may one day deliver better results at lower cost, experts say. (As)