Many Adults and Children With Insomnia Use Trazodone in the United States

A study published in Clinical Therapeutics found that trazodone use was common among patients of all ages with insomnia in the United States.

Investigators from Angelini Pharma in Italy sourced data for this retrospective, descriptive cohort study from the IBM MarketScan Commercial and Medicare Supplemental Databases. Trends in trazodone use between 2009 and 2019 were evaluated among patients with insomnia.

Among the 5,804,687 patients diagnosed with insomnia during the study period, 17.7% were prescribed trazodone. The 357,380 adult and 7564 pediatric trazodone users were included in this study.

The adult and pediatric cohorts comprised 64.2% women and 59.2% girls, were a mean age of 48.8 (standard deviation [SD], 15.8) and 14.8 (SD, 2.7) years, 82.1% and 78.8% had unspecified insomnia, respectively, and Charlson comorbidity index scores were 0.58 (SD, 1.233) and 0.18 (SD, 0.478) points, respectively.

Among the adult cohort, the median trazodone daily dose was 50 mg across cohort years with a median supply of 30 days. The median number of prescriptions was 2.0 for each cohort year. Concomitant use of antidepressants (60.7%), acetaminophen or hydrocodone bitartrate (37.7%), benzodiazepines (37.1%), azithromycin (32.5%), antiepileptics (32.2%), prednisone (26.8%), nonbenzodiazepines (25.4%), zolpidem (22.1%), and antipsychotics (11.3%) were observed.

For the pediatric cohort, the median daily dose of trazodone was 50 mg with a 30-day supply, similar to the adult cohort. The median number of trazodone prescriptions each year was 2.0 between 2011 and 2014, and between 2.0 and 3.0 from 2015 to 2018, respectively. Concomitant use of antidepressants (71.6%), azithromycin (34.3%), amoxicillin (33.6%), antiepileptics (27.8%), antipsychotics (27.3%), sertraline hydrochloride (27.1%), benzodiazepines (15.7%), and nonbenzodiazepines (7.2%) were observed.

This study may have included coding errors or missing data.

Study authors concluded, “The findings from this large real-world study of insured patients are reflective of current practice in the United States and suggest that trazodone is widely used among patients with insomnia, especially when this condition is associated with other specific comorbidities, such as psychiatric conditions.”

Disclosure: Multiple authors declared affiliations with industry. Please refer to the original article for a full list of disclosures.

This article originally appeared on Psychiatry Advisor