New research suggests that people who take benzodiazepines, a.k.a. prescription drugs like Xanax and Valium, are at higher risk for developing Alzheimer's disease.
A study published in The BMJ (formerly The British Medical Journal) this week found a link between anti-anxiety and sleeping drugs and Alzheimer's disease. Researchers studied the medication history of 1,796 elderly people with Alzheimer's, along with 7,184 controls who weren't diagnosed with Alzheimer's, and found that use of benzodiazepines increased the participants' Alzheimer's risk by as much as 51 percent.
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