Lunesta Stomped

Health Care Renewal posted an interesting piece about the misleading ads for Lunesta, which was largely based on an NPR clip. Yeah, the sleeping pill with the butterfly ads, which raked in $567 million for Sepracor in 2006. Essentially, research on the drug has actually found that actual amount of sleep changes by somewhere in the range of 37 minutes compared to placebo, with people falling asleep, at best, 10-15 minutes faster while taking the drug compared to placebo. Another interesting dissection of Lunesta advertising is up on the Consumer Reports website.

Oh, and another study found that using behavioral sleep management techniques resulted in higher quality sleep than did taking Lunesta. So keep that butterfly out of my bedroom!

With that, I close. I'll be away for a few days. Enjoy your weekend.