University of Oulu

Heikkala, E., Jokelainen, J., Mikkola, I. et al. Recurrent prescription of sleep medication among primary care patients with type 2 diabetes: an observational study of real-world registry data. BMC Prim. Care 24, 90 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12875-023-02045-1

Recurrent prescription of sleep medication among primary care patients with type 2 diabetes : an observational study of real-world registry data

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Author: Heikkala, Eveliina1,2,3; Jokelainen, Jari4; Mikkola, Ilona1;
Organizations: 1Rovaniemi Health Center, Koskikatu 25, Rovaniemi, 96200, Finland
2Research Unit of Population Health, University of Oulu, PO Box 5000, Oulu, 90015, Finland
3Medical Research Center Oulu, University of Oulu and Oulu University Hospital, PO Box 5000, Oulu, 90014, Finland
4Arctic Biobank, Infrastructure for Population Studies, Faculty of Medicine, Northern Finland Birth Cohorts, University of Oulu, PO Box 5000, Oulu, 90015, Finland
Format: article
Version: published version
Access: open
Online Access: PDF Full Text (PDF, 0.9 MB)
Persistent link: http://urn.fi/urn:nbn:fi-fe20230920133851
Language: English
Published: Springer Nature, 2023
Publish Date: 2023-09-20
Description:

Abstract

Background: Little knowledge exists on the prevalence of recurrent sleep medication prescriptions among primary care patients with type 2 diabetes (T2D). Our aims were to examine the prevalence of recurrent sleep medication prescriptions and to elucidate the most often prescribed sleep medications in a Finnish primary care T2D population.

Methods: The study examined 4,508 T2D patients who consulted a primary health care center between 2011 and 2019 in Rovaniemi, Finland. All the data were retrieved from patient records, and recurrent sleep medication was defined as two or more prescriptions within the study period. We used the Chi-square and Kruskal–Wallis tests to compare patients who did and did not have recurrent sleep medication prescriptions.

Results: Altogether 28.1% of the T2D patients had been prescribed recurrent sleep medication. Benzodiazepine-like medication, melatonin, and mirtazapine were most often prescribed (to 56.9%, 44.4%, and 35.8%, respectively). Only 22.0% of the patients with recurrent sleep medication prescriptions had been diagnosed with a sleep disorder.

Conclusions: Recurrent sleep medication prescriptions are frequent among primary care T2D patients. It seems that sleep disorders are underdiagnosed in relation to this. Primary care clinicians should carefully estimate the need for sleep medication when treating T2D patients’ sleep problems and emphasize the diagnostic patterns of sleep problems.

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Series: BMC primary care
ISSN: 2731-4553
ISSN-E: 2731-4553
ISSN-L: 2731-4553
Volume: 24
Issue: 1
Article number: 90
DOI: 10.1186/s12875-023-02045-1
OADOI: https://oadoi.org/10.1186/s12875-023-02045-1
Type of Publication: A1 Journal article – refereed
Field of Science: 3121 General medicine, internal medicine and other clinical medicine
Subjects:
Funding: EH received financial support from The Finnish Cultural Foundation. The study was also supported by the Sakari Alhopuro Foundation. The funding sources were not involved in the study design; in data collection, analysis or interpretation; in the writing process; nor in the decision to submit the article for publication. Open Access funding provided by University of Oulu including Oulu University Hospital.
Copyright information: © The Author(s) 2023. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver ( http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
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