Press Release

Although a study shows that the medication tiagabine does not produce improvements in the primary measures of insomnia therapy, secondary findings may shed light on how to improve the sleep quality of elderly people with insomnia.

Results of the study appear in the March 1 issue of the journal Sleep .

The study shows that tiagabine does not significantly affect the time spent awake after initially falling asleep, the time it takes to reach a persistent state of sleep, or total sleep time. Sleep continuity also remains disrupted by a high number of awakenings, and subjective ratings of sleep quality fail to improve.

The study does show that tiagabine causes significant dose-dependent increases compared to placebo in the length of sleep stages 3 and 4, also known as slow-wave sleep or SWS. These sleep stages may play a crucial role in memory and cognitive function, and some consider SWS to be the most restorative stage of sleep, according to background information in the article.

The authors write that “the large increases in SWS reported in this study did not result in a significant effect on the subjective rating of sleep or improved cognitive performance … it is possible that sleep continuity may be more important than sleep depth with respect to subjective sleep quality in older patients with insomnia.”

Sleep is the official journal of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies, LLC, a joint venture of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and the Sleep Research Society. Go online to www.journalsleep.org for more information.