Midazolam is a drug often used to help patients feel calm and relaxed before surgery. It can ease stress and sometimes even cause patients to forget the experience.
But now, scientists have found that this drug might carry risks when it is given at night.
A research team at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus looked at the medical records of over 1.7 million people who had surgery and received midazolam. They found that more than 16,000 of these patients had heart problems after the procedure.
When they studied the data more carefully, they saw something surprising—surgeries that happened at night were more likely to cause heart damage. Even patients who were generally healthy had a higher risk if they were treated at night.
This strange pattern made the scientists ask: Why would time of day matter so much? To answer this, they studied a gene called PER2. This gene helps control the body’s internal clock, also known as circadian rhythm. Circadian rhythm is like a natural timer that tells our body when to sleep, eat, and even how to protect organs like the heart.
To understand how midazolam and this gene interact, the researchers did lab tests using mice. They found that midazolam increases a brain chemical called GABA, which helps us relax.
But while this helps reduce stress, it also lowers the activity of the PER2 gene, especially at night. Since the PER2 gene helps protect the heart, reducing its activity at night makes the heart weaker and more likely to get hurt.
This discovery shows that the timing of a drug can change how it affects the body. Giving midazolam at night might be more dangerous for the heart than giving it during the day.
The study’s lead author, Tobias Eckle, explained that these results support the idea of “personalized medicine.” This means doctors may need to consider not just which drug to give, but also when to give it.
Some medicines, like certain blood pressure drugs, are already known to work better when taken at specific times. This new research suggests that we might need to think about timing for more drugs too. Doing so could make surgeries safer and help people heal better.
This study reminds us that our body’s natural rhythms play a big role in how we respond to medicine. By planning treatments based on the time of day, doctors could make healthcare more effective and safer for everyone.
If you care about heart health, please read studies about how eating eggs can help reduce heart disease risk, and herbal supplements could harm your heart rhythm.
For more health information, please see recent studies about how drinking milk affects risks of heart disease and cancer, and results showing strawberries could help prevent Alzheimer’s disease.
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