ZOLPIDEM IS AN EFFECTIVE OPTION WITH A REDUCED RISK FOR DEPENDENCE IN THE TREATMENT OF INSOMNIA

Abstract

Insomnia is a highly prevalent sleep disorder that frequently occurs in its acute form and occurs at a rate of approximately 10 per cent in its chronic form in many countries. There is a high prevalence of insomnia in a variety of medical and psychiatric conditions for which insomnia often serves as a risk factor. There are various types of insomnia which are categorized in terms of how it affects sleep it has been shown to negatively affect many physiological, cognitive, and behavioural measures within the body. Recent years have observed that there is sudden increase of various diseases like hypertension, Heart attack, Obesity, Diabetes etc which occurs as a result of insomnia. Hence its impact on financial, social and psychological status of patients and their caregivers cannot be ignored. Thus finding a novel way to tackle these health problems is the need of present times. The most commonly prescribed medications for insomnia are the benzodiazepines (BZP) such as temazepam and diazepam. Although these medications are efficacious, they are associated with tolerance, dependence, residual daytime sedative effects, cognitive and psychomotor impairment, and discontinuation syndromes including rebound insomnia and withdrawal symptoms. For this reason, BZD use should be judicious and is replaced by Zolpidem, a novel non-benzodiazepine hypnotics of Imidazopyridine class that has various advantages over benzodiazepines. Chronic administration of zolpidem produces neither tolerance to its sedative effects nor signs of withdrawal when the drug is discontinued. Also it has little effect on the stages of sleep in normal human subjects. The drug is as effective as benzodiazepines in shortening sleep latency and prolonging total sleep time in patients with insomnia. Tolerance and physical dependence develop only rarely and under unusual circumstances.

Keywords: Insomnia, sleep disorder, benzodiazepines, tolerance, dependence, zolpidem, Imidazopyridine