BACKGROUND The objective of this study was to determine the sedative load and use of sedative and psychotropic medications among older people with dementia living in (residential) care homes. METHODS Medication data were collected at baseline and at two further time-points for eligible residents of six care homes participating in the EVIDEM-End Of Life (EOL) study for whom medication administ...

Sedatives are widely prescribed for anxiety or insomnia and include benzodiazepines, selective benzodiazepine receptor subtype agonists (z-drugs), and barbiturates. These sedatives are controlled substances due to their potential for misuse and abuse. Misuse is often self-medication (chemical coping) of psychological symptoms in ways unauthorized by the prescriber, usually as dose escalation le...

Ethanol and other drugs of abuse modulate cAMP-PKA signaling within the mesolimbic reward pathway. To understand the role of the cAMP-PKA signal transduction in mediating the effects of ethanol, we have studied ethanol consumption and the sedative effects of ethanol in three lines of genetically modified mice. We report that mice with the targeted disruption of one Gsalpha allele as well as mic...

The purpose of this updating manuscript is to briefly describe the profile, clinical use and indication of some of the most used sedative and hypnotic compounds. About 2/3 of all hypnotic prescriptions go to chronic use. Benzodiazepines are among the most prescribed drugs worldwide. Women, elderly, psychiatric and medical disease patients are among chronic users of hypnotics. Zolpidem is now th...

The present study was undertaken to evaluate Tagara and Jatamansi for certain CNS activities to ascertain the basis for their use as a sedative and hypnotics. The drugs were evaluated for hypnotic and sedative, anti anxiety, anti depressant and anti psychotic activities using standard experimental protocol. The data generated suggests that the test drugs Tagara and Jatamansi have complex CNS ac...

We describe the successful use of methadone in the restoration of sedation and provision of analgesia in two morphine-tolerant, paediatric patients who had suffered significant thermal injuries and were undergoing mechanical ventilation. Both patients had exhibited escalating requirements for sedative drugs while undergoing ventilation yet remained inadequately sedated. The introduction of i.v....

The two main non-sedative effects of thalidomide (2-phtalimido-glutarimide) in man are the embryopathy, which finally forced termination of its use as a sedative, and the excellent efficacy in leprosy reactions, alone for whose prevention and treatment the drug is still available. Both effects can be explained on the molecular level by assuming that a non-sedative metabolite of thalidomide medi...