A new study conducted by researchers from the University of California has suggested that the use of sleeping meds may translate into an increased risk of dementia for White people.
The research in question involved some 3,068 “community-dwelling” older adult participants over 74 years of age who were not suffering from dementia at the onset of the study and who were “followed over an average duration of nine years,” according to a press release issued by the university.
The authors of the new draft paper published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease allege that 20 percent of participants developed dementia, with the White participants who were taking sleep medication “often” or “almost always” displaying a 79 percent higher chance to develop that affliction than those who rarely used sleeping pills or did not use them at all.
At the same time, the use of sleeping medications apparently did not affect the likelihood of the Black participants.
First author of the study Yue Leng, Ph.D, from the UCSF Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, mused that these differences may be related to the “socioeconomic status” of the participants.
“Black participants who have access to sleep medications might be a select group with high socioeconomic status and, thus, greater cognitive reserve, making them less susceptible to dementia,” he said as quoted in the press release. “It’s also possible that some sleep medications were associated with a higher risk of dementia than others.”
The researchers also discovered that White participants were three times as likely to take sleeping pills than Black participants.