ArticleDrug safety2021
Patterns of Benzodiazepine Use and Excess Risk of All-Cause Mortality in the Elderly: A Nationwide Cohort Study.
Article in Drug safety, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed.
- Pilot RCT Testing A Mailing About Sleeping Pills and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia: Impact on Benzodiazepines and Z-Drugs.Clinical gerontologistTrial
- Benzodiazepine Use and Mortality Risk: A Nationwide Cohort Study on New Benzodiazepine Users With a 5-Year Follow-Up.Acta psychiatrica Scandinavica · 2026Article
- Prevalence and Incidence of Oral Benzodiazepine Use in Hospitalized Surgical Patients: A Retrospective Cohort Study.Annals of surgery · 2026Article
- Association between sedative prescriptions after hospital discharge and falls and other adverse events in older adults: a population-based cohort study.CMAJ : Canadian Medical Association journal = journal de l'Association medicale canadienne · 2026Article
- Psychiatric and racial/ethnic differences in incident and long-term benzodiazepine use: A commercial healthcare claims study.Journal of psychiatric research · 2025Article
- Determination of 14 Benzodiazepine Multiresidues in Aquaculture Environment by Ultra-High-Performance Liquid Chromatography-Tandem Mass Spectrometry.Molecules (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Article
- Observational
- Impact of long-term management with sleep medications on blood pressure: An Australian national study.Brain and behavior · 2023Article
- Benzodiazepines in complex biological matrices: Recent updates on pretreatment and detection methods.Journal of pharmaceutical analysis · 2023Review
- Evaluation of the effectiveness of a joint general practitioner-pharmacist intervention on the implementation of benzodiazepine deprescribing in older adults (BESTOPH-MG trial): protocol for a cluster-randomized controlled trial.Frontiers in medicine · 2023Article
- Use of benzodiazepine and Z-drugs and mortality in older adults after myocardial infarction.International journal of geriatric psychiatry · 2023Article
- Use of Benzodiazepines and Z-Drugs in Multiple Sclerosis.Frontiers in neurology · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
introductionDespite the risks associated with their use, benzodiazepines remain used more widely than wisely. In this context, a better understanding of how their patterns of use can be associated with an increased risk of death appears essential. Indeed, the studies that investigated this association so far are inconsistent and question the influence of potential biases.
objectiveThe objective of this study was to investigate the association of various patterns of benzodiazepine use with all-cause mortality.
methodsA nationwide cohort of non-prevalent benzodiazepine users aged ≥ 65 years was identified using French healthcare insurance system claims databases. Exposure to benzodiazepines considered short-term, chronic (defined as a cumulated ≥ 6-month period over the previous 12 months), ongoing, and discontinued use. Using a Cox model, adjusted hazard ratios for all-cause mortality were estimated according to benzodiazepine patterns of use; exposure and confounders were treated as time-dependent variables.
resultsIn the cohort of 54,958 individuals aged ≥ 65 years, adjusted hazard ratios for all-cause mortality and benzodiazepines were 2.26 (95% confidence interval 1.96-2.61) for short-term use, 3.86 (3.04-4.90) for chronic use-discontinued, and 3.05 (2.17-4.29) for chronic use-ongoing. At age 80 years, these were 1.62 (1.48-1.79), 2.00 (1.82-2.19) and 1.13 (1.02-1.26), respectively. Adjusted hazard ratios show similar decreases with age for all patterns of benzodiazepine use.
conclusionsThese findings confirm the existence of an excess risk of mortality associated with benzodiazepine use and provide pattern- and age-specific estimates. Higher risks were observed for patients aged < 80 years, short-term use, or chronic use recently interrupted. If the two latter can relate to an indication bias, the associations found for ongoing chronic use and short-term use conversely support a potential causal hypothesis.
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Registered trials
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