Study eyes sleeping pills' link to cancer

Prescription sleeping pills may help you get much-needed rest, but using them routinely might also make it more likely that you will develop cancer or even die, a study suggests.

Research suggests that people who take such medications are four times more likely to die than those who don't. It also shows a raised risk for certain cancers.

The findings appeared online Monday in the journal BMJ Open.

Sleeping pills linked to the risks include benzodiazepines, such as temazepam; Ambien (zolpidem), Lunesta (eszopiclone) and Sonata (zaleplon); barbiturates; and sedative antihistamines.

As the study shows only an association between the pills and death risk, not cause-and-effect, many experts urged caution in jumping to any conclusions from the findings.

But the study author, Dr. Daniel Kripke of the Scripps Clinic Viterbi Family Sleep Center in La Jolla, Calif., declared: "Popular sleeping pills are associated with a shocking excess of deaths and a horrible increase in new cancers." -- HealthDay