Midazolam is a drug that doctors often use to help patients relax before surgery.
It makes people feel sleepy and calm, and many patients don’t remember the surgery afterward. It’s a helpful medicine that’s been used for a long time.
But researchers from the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus have found something surprising about this drug. They discovered that the time of day the drug is given might affect the heart.
The scientists looked at over 1.7 million medical records. They focused on patients who were given midazolam during surgery. Out of these patients, more than 16,000 had some kind of heart injury.
When the researchers looked closer, they saw that heart injuries were more common in surgeries that happened at night. This was especially true for patients who were healthy otherwise.
Why would this happen? The team wanted to find out. So, they studied how the drug affects a special gene called PER2. This gene helps control our body’s internal clock, also known as the circadian rhythm. This internal clock helps us sleep, stay awake, and also protects our heart.
They ran experiments on mice to see how midazolam affects this gene. The drug increases a calming chemical in the brain called GABA. But at night, this also lowers the activity of the PER2 gene.
That’s a problem because the PER2 gene helps protect the heart. So, when midazolam is given at night, it may stop the gene from doing its job. That makes the heart more likely to get hurt.
This discovery shows us that the time of day when we take medicine can be very important. Some drugs, like medicine for high blood pressure, already work better when taken at night. This new study suggests that for drugs like midazolam, taking them at night could be riskier.
Dr. Tobias Eckle, the lead researcher, published the study in a medical journal. He says doctors should think more about timing when they give medications. Giving medicine at the right time might help people stay safer and healthier.
This idea is part of something called personalized medicine. It means doctors choose the best treatment for each person, not just based on who they are but also on when the treatment is given. If doctors start using this idea more, it could make medical care even better.
This study is a reminder of how complex our bodies are. Our inner clocks and the medicines we take are closely linked. Learning more about these links can help doctors give safer and smarter care.
If you care about heart health, please read studies that vitamin K helps cut heart disease risk by a third, and a year of exercise reversed worrisome heart failure.
For more health information, please see recent studies about supplements that could help prevent heart disease, stroke, and results showing this food ingredient may strongly increase heart disease death risk.
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