{"id":694364,"date":"2026-06-09T22:28:16","date_gmt":"2026-06-09T22:28:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/694364\/"},"modified":"2026-06-09T22:28:16","modified_gmt":"2026-06-09T22:28:16","slug":"a-commonly-used-sleep-aid-may-have-a-dangerous-side-effect-sciencealert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/694364\/","title":{"rendered":"A Commonly Used Sleep Aid May Have a Dangerous Side Effect : ScienceAlert"},"content":{"rendered":"

Around 1 in 5 US adults<\/a> are thought to struggle with sleep health, and for many of us, the search for rest eventually leads to medication.<\/p>\n

But new research suggests a commonly used sleep aid may come with alarming side effects.<\/p>\n

Quetiapine (sold as Seroquel) is an antipsychotic drug approved for conditions including schizophrenia<\/a> and bipolar disorder<\/a>, but studies have shown<\/a> it can improve sleep quality, and it’s often prescribed at lower doses as an ‘off-label’ treatment for insomnia.<\/p>\n

“There’s a growing belief that low\u2011dose quetiapine is a relatively harmless way to help people sleep,” says<\/a> first author and sleep scientist Cricket Fauska, from Flinders University in Australia.<\/p>\n

“Our results show it’s not that simple.”<\/p>\n

Here, Fauska and colleagues conducted a small clinical trial<\/a> to assess its effects in people with obstructive sleep apnea<\/a>, the most common type.<\/p>\n

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Obstructive sleep apnea occurs when the upper airway is intermittently blocked during sleep, leading to headaches, snoring, and increased tiredness the next day.<\/p>\n

Almost a billion people are thought to be<\/a> affected by it.<\/p>\n

Experiments on 15 people with obstructive sleep apnoea and problems staying asleep<\/a> showed that while quetiapine was effective to some extent, there were worrying impacts for the participants the next day.<\/p>\n

“Although participants slept longer and woke less overnight, their reaction times were slower, and their simulated driving performance was noticeably worse the next morning.”<\/p>\n

The shifts were quite dramatic.<\/p>\n

On a 10-minute psychomotor vigilance test<\/a>, participants were slower to react after taking quetiapine compared with after a placebo<\/a>. Their attention lapses during the test also rose from a median of 2 after placebo to 10 after quetiapine.<\/p>\n

In the driving simulation, participants drifted an extra 33 percent farther from the center of their lane, on average, after being given quetiapine compared with placebo.<\/p>\n

\"Subscribe<\/a><\/p>\n

For actual crashes<\/a> in the simulator, the rate almost doubled with quetiapine compared to placebo, though the relatively small sample size of this study means the statistical effect was limited (it may have been down to chance).<\/p>\n

“What was particularly concerning is that some people didn’t feel especially sleepy the next day, despite performing worse on objective tests,” says<\/a> Fauska.<\/p>\n

“That mismatch between how people feel and how they actually function poses a serious safety risk, especially when it comes to driving.”<\/p>\n

The study does not show that quetiapine is always unsafe. Doctors regularly prescribe medications off-label when the benefits may outweigh the risks, and quetiapine has been shown to be beneficial for sleep<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But the researchers are calling for tighter regulation of the drug’s prescription.<\/p>\n

Obstructive sleep apnea and insomnia often appear together, but crucially, around 80 percent of people with the sleep apnea condition are thought to be undiagnosed.<\/p>\n

People with sleep apnea may wake often or struggle to stay asleep, which can make their symptoms difficult to pick apart from insomnia<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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That means a significant number of people could be using a medication that appears to work in improving sleep quality, but which seriously impairs attention and reaction times the next day \u2013 even if the individuals don’t feel any different.<\/p>\n

“Our findings suggest quetiapine should not be used as a routine sleep medication in people with known or possible sleep apnoea, particularly when next\u2011day alertness is critical,” says<\/a> sleep scientist Danny Eckert, from Flinders University.<\/p>\n

The researchers also point to growing evidence<\/a> that there’s no one-size-fits-all treatment for obstructive sleep apnea.<\/p>\n

\"IllustrationObstructive sleep apnea can be caused by the tongue and soft palate blocking your airway during sleep. (National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute<\/a>)<\/p>\n

The next step is to test quetiapine in larger groups, at different doses, and over longer periods. This study involved only one night of quetiapine and one night of placebo, so it cannot show what happens with repeated use.<\/p>\n

Related: Nightly Sleep Apnea Pill Fast-Tracked For Approval After Latest Trial Success<\/a><\/p>\n

“Sleep apnoea is a complex condition with different underlying drivers in different people,” says<\/a> Eckert.<\/p>\n

“What we’re learning is that treatment needs to be tailored \u2013 using the right approach, or combination of approaches, for the individual rather than defaulting to sedating medications.”<\/p>\n

The research has been published in Annals of the American Thoracic Society<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Around 1 in 5 US adults are thought to struggle with sleep health, and for many of us,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":694365,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[97,1352],"class_list":["post-694364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-health","tag-msft-content"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=694364"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694364\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/694365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=694364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=694364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=694364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}