Benzos, Sleep, Memory, Dementia

It’s been 3 years since BMJ (formerly The British Medical Journal) published “Benzodiazepine use and risk of Alzheimer’s disease: case-control study” (BMJ 2014; 349:g5205).

The main conclusion was that using benzodiazepines (“ben-zoe-dye-AIZE-uh-peenz” or BZDs or benzos, which include Klonopin/clonazepam, Xanax/alprazolam, Valium/diazepam, Ativan/lorazepam, Restoril/temazepam, and others) for more than 90 days resulted in an increased risk for dementia of the Alzheimer type after age 66.

We are certainly alerting our patients to this problem.