Regular consumption of sleeping pills could more than quadruple the risk of premature death, US scientists said.
A two-and-a-half year study of more than 10,500 adults who were taking prescribed sleeping tablets found that those who took between 18 and 132 doses per year were 4.6 times more likely to die early.
Even those who took less than 18 pills a year were 3.6 times more likely to die than those who did not take the sleeping aids, according to experts at the Jackson Hole Centre for Preventive Medicine in Jackson, Wyoming, and the Scripps Clinic Viterbi Family Sleep Centre in San Diego.
The scientists reached their findings after comparing the death rates of those taking prescribed sleeping aids with a control group of more than 23,600 people who had not taken the pills.
The study participants, who took sleeping pills, were matched with control patients of similar ages, gender, lifestyle and health.
“We tried every practical strategy to make these associations go away, thinking that they could be due to use by people with more health problems, but no matter what we did the associations with higher mortality held,” co-author, Dr. Robert Langer of the Jackson Hole Centre for Preventive Medicine said.
The researchers also found that people taking the highest dose of sleeping pills were 35 per cent more likely to suffer from cancer than those who did not take the drugs.
While the doctors were able to establish a statistical link between the consumption of sleeping pills and premature death and illness, they could not provide a cause for their findings.
Between six and 10 per cent of US adults were prescribed sleeping pills in 2010, the researchers said.
They hoped their findings would lead to further research in this area.