Benzodiazepines

Pneumonia cases in the elderly are strongly associated with use of anticholinergic medications, including benzodiazepines and tricyclic antidepressants.

Despite the well-known risks of the drugs, especially for the elderly, prescription use of addictive benzodiazepine sedatives in the United States increases steadily with age, according to a large-scale study published in JAMA Psychiatry. Overall, as of 2008, 5.2% of American adults were taking the drugs. The study also showed that women were twice as likely to be taking benzodiazepines as men. National Institute of Mental Health director Thomas Insel called the findings "worrisome."

Benzodiazepine medications that are commonly used for calming or sedating people can sometimes apparently cause violent or aggressive responses in some people, according to...

The American Psychiatric Association (APA) publication Psychiatric News has released an article about the recent British Medical Journal study finding strong links between long-term...

According to a study in the British Medical Journal, benzodiazepine use is associated with a significantly increased risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. Some experts...

"Fish that have been exposed to a common anti-anxiety drug are more active and have better chances of survival than unexposed fish," reports Nature....

A study of data from over 11 million patient records in the General Practice Research Database, "the largest anonymized, longitudinal primary care database in...

Research presented at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Pain Medicine finds that 12.6% of primary care visits in the U.S. involved...

Over one third of people with bipolar diagnoses admitted to a Rhode Island hospital were on four or more psychiatric medications, says research published...

MiA blogger Jeffrey Lacasse's study of psychiatric prescribing in response to perinatal/neonatal death (co-authored with Joanne Cacciatore) finds that 37% of participants in an...

Research from London and Taipei finds that neuroleptic malignant syndrome (NMS) is associated with the number of different antipsychotics used (polypharmacy), rather than the overall...

Researchers in Taiwan found a 3.33x greater risk of benign brain tumors in patients who had been prescribed benzodiazepines for at least 2 months....

A review of all the relevant research comparing benzodiazepines (BDZ) to antidepressants (AD) for the treatment of anxiety was published Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics this Friday....

A meta-analysis of all relevant studies on MEDLINE, EMBASE, OVID and ScienceDirect published through January 2013 finds that the use of benzodiazepines, especially short-acting,...

Researchers in Germany, China and Australia teamed up to find, through a meta-analysis of research pertaining to 1045 patients receiving antipsychotics, that augmentation with...

Drugs that pass into the water supply can alter the behavior of fish, according to a paper published today in Science magazine. Experiments using...

Psychotropic medications, including short-acting benzodiazepines, strongly increase the frequency of falls in the elderly, according to research from the Netherlands published in Maturitas: The...

An editorial in Thorax reviews the evidence for an association between mental illness, benzodiazepine use, and pneumonia. The authors find an equally augmented rate...

A 15-year prospective study, in the British Medical Journal this week, of 1063 subjects by researchers from the University of Bordeaux and Harvard University...

Researchers in the U.K. find in a 22-year prospective study of 1134 men, 103 of whom took benzodiazepines regularly for one or more period...

Researchers from the Taiwan and the United States find through a study of 5,183 subjects with motor vehicle accidents (MVAs) and 31,093 matched controls...

Researchers in Taiwan found in a retrospective analysis of data from the Taiwanese National Health Insurance system concerning 59,647 patients from 1996 to 2000 that...

Finnish researchers found that among 2,588 patients hospitalized for the first time with a diagnosis of schizophrenia, benzodiazepine use predicted almost 4x the rate...

Long-term use of benzodiazepines for anxiety remains a widespread, despite guidelines that recommend against it, according to a roundtable discussion at the annual conference of...

In a review of the evidence regarding benzodiazepines, researchers from the University of Michigan find that benzodiazepines used in the treatment of PTSD are...