Hospital admissions due to acute barbiturate poisoning per million population in England and Wales have decreased since 1965 at about the same rate as NHS prescriptions for barbiturates. Admissions due to poisoning with other drugs have increased, but, largely because the benzodiazepine hypnotics and tranquillisers are much less toxic than the barbiturates that they are replacing, deaths from p...

BACKGROUND Falls and related injuries remain a concern for patient safety in many hospitals and nursing care facilities. In particular, reports examining the relationship between accidents and drugs with a sedative effect have been increasing; however, the analysis of correlation between the background factors of fall accidents and the detailed therapeutic category of drugs is insufficient. O...

BACKGROUND The use of hypnotics is prevalent in the general population. Though these drugs have been shown to be effective, their residual effects may cause significant impairment to the user's driving ability. The objective of this meta-analysis is to determine whether there is a residual effect on driving and better evaluate the safety of hypnotics. METHOD Randomized double-blind placebo-co...

Hypnotic effects of melatonin and melatoninergic drugs are mediated via MT(1) and MT(2) receptors, especially those in the circadian pacemaker, the suprachiasmatic nucleus, which acts on the hypothalamic sleep switch. Therefore, they differ fundamentally from GABAergic hypnotics. Melatoninergic agonists primarily favor sleep initiation and reset the circadian clock to phases allowing persistent...

OBJECTIVE The availability of suicide methods affects the risk of suicide attempts. This study examined the patterns of substances ingested by suicide attempters (SAs) and the characteristics of SAs using psychotropic overdoses. METHODS Data for 384 of the 462 eligible SAs who used self-poisoning were analyzed. Demographic variables, clinical characteristics, and factors related to the suicid...

Psychopharmacology is a large and wide topic ranging from the molecular biology of centrally-active molecules to the social and economic aspects of psychotropic drug usage. Psychopharmacology and social psychiatry are complementary and synergistic, particularly with respect to treatments for the mentally ill. Accordingly, I have concentrated on the topic of drug treatments and their relevance t...

background: many studies have been done in order to interpret correctly the results of ethanol analysis and its related problems. unfortunately, it was not easy to determine bac rate, due to postmortem different conditions or personal and clinical differences in metabolism and excretion of ethanol. the time between death and autopsy, the environmental conditions (temperature and humidity) are i...

The accurate assessment of the depth of anesthesia, allowing a more accurate adaptation of the doses of hypnotics, is an important end point for the anesthesiologist. It is a particularly crucial issue in pediatric anesthesia, in the context of the recent controversies about the potential neurological consequences of the main anesthetic drugs on the developing brain. The electroencephalogram si...

Differences in development of tolerance and occurrence of rebound insomnia have been well established between rapidly and slowly eliminated benzodiazepine hypnotics. Based on meta-analytic methodology, this study assesses whether there are such differences among the rapidly eliminated benzodiazepine and benzodiazepine-like hypnotics (brotizolam, midazolam, triazolam, zolpidem and zopiclone). Al...

Objectives. To quantify and characterize hypnotics consumption habits among adult patients insured by Clalit Health Services (CHS), the largest health care provider in Israel, in 2000 and 2010. Methods. A retrospective analysis of CHS computerized pharmacy records. Data were collected for all patients over the age of 18 years who were prescribed hypnotics in 2000 and in 2010. Results. Sleep med...