A recent study has found that a quite common surgery sedative, when taken on the flawed time, can increase the chance of heart damage in patients in non-cardiac surgery.

“My lab and I even have been studying chronotherapy, or how the time of day affects disease development and treatment effectiveness, for a few years. In our  recently published research, we found that using a specific sedative at night can increase the chance for heart damage,” co-author Tobias Eckle on the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus said, reported Inverse.

The sedative in query is midazolam – “essentially the most common sedative utilized in surgical procedures worldwide,” Eckle said, and added “currently, there are not any guidelines regarding when midazolam ought to be administered.”

Chronotherapy is premised on the concept that like all bodily functions, drugs are also influenced by the 24-hour day-night cycle, called the circadian rhythm.

“Which means the particular proteins a drug is designed to switch can react in another way to the medication over the course of a 24-hour time period,” Eckle explained.

Some examples elucidated by the researcher include over-the-counter acid reflux disorder drug,  omeprazole, and blood pressure medications which are said to be handiest when taken before bedtime or within the evening, respectively.

“Considering that the highest 10 highest-grossing drugs within the U.S. help only between 1 in 25 and 1 in 4 of the individuals who take them, I feel that taking drug timing into consideration could help make treatments more practical and help more people worldwide,” Eckle stated.

Nonetheless, doctors seldom if ever consider the suitable time of drugs administration while prescribing drugs. Eckle attributes this oversight to 2 aspects.

First, physicians should not aware of chronotherapy and its advantages. In other words, they don’t know that some drugs can have greater efficacy when taken during a certain time of the day. Second, not enough research has been conducted on this field for various drugs to know the very best time for his or her administration.

In consequence, the final timing of morning or evening is prescribed by the doctors for medication.

Besides being ineffective, taking some drugs on the flawed time may prove to be dangerous.

The study, published within the journal Frontiers in Cardiovascular Medicine, “analyzed data from 50 medical institutions for the occurrence of heart damage during surgical procedures from 2014 to 2019, we found that taking midazolam during overnight surgeries may increase the chances of heart damage in healthy patients by over threefold,” Eckle said.

Nonetheless, further research is required in the sector to reap the advantages of chronotherapy.

“More research is required to find out the very best times to manage treatments for various diseases. Taking the time of day into consideration might require reformulating some medications that last for greater than a 24-hour time period within the body,” Eckle concluded.