Many sufferers and doctors use medication to treat insomnia. An international research team led by Andrea Cipriani from Oxford University has therefore devoted itself to the question of which sleep-inducing agents can really be recommended from a scientific point of view. To do this, the 17 researchers evaluated 154 controlled clinical studies in which a total of 30 active ingredients were examined in more than 44,000 sleep-disordered patients.
A massive pool of data – albeit with the caveat that only five studies have tracked the effectiveness and only eight the safety of the drugs over a period of three months or longer. Which, given that sleep disorders tend to be chronic, is already a deficit. Nevertheless, the researchers were able to set up a kind of list of the best in common sleeping pills.
