NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Women, try not to think of this if you lie awake at night: having trouble sleeping means you're likely to gain weight. As if simply getting older weren't hard enough, new research shows that middle-aged and older women who have trouble falling or staying asleep may pack on more pounds than their well-rested contemporaries ...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - An insomnia drug being developed by Merck & Co was significantly better at improving sleep than a placebo in a mid-stage study, according to data presented on Wednesday. The drug, MK-4305, helped patients sleep for a larger percentage of eight hours spent in bed at one night and at the end of four weeks of treatment, Merck said ...

For many travelers who cross several time zones, the exhilaration of taking in sights like the Eiffel Tower or the pyramids of Egypt is quickly tempered by the grogginess of jet lag. Veteran flyers often have their own remedies to overcome those signals from the body that it's time for sleep. But an Oregon researcher recently detailed in The ...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Tylenol PM and other widely used acetaminophen pain drugs that include a sleep-aid failed to show significant benefit in a key study, U.S. health regulators have told drugmakers 15 years after the industry submitted the data. Patients taking the drugs, most commonly sold as Johnson & Johnson's Tylenol PM and Novartis AG's Excedrin PM, did ...

Just days after receiving Food and Drug Administration approval for Silenor, biotech company Somaxon Pharmaceuticals Inc. made plans to sell 4 million shares to fund marketing of the insomnia drug. Somaxon expects to grant the underwriters an option to purchase up to 600,000 additional shares ...

Allegations that workers at a church day care put an over-the-counter dietary supplement in candy to help children sleep at nap time are under investigation, police said Tuesday, and the church's pastor said two workers have been fired. Springfield Township police Lt. Dave Schaefer confirmed ...

TAIPEI (Reuters Life!) - More than one in five people in Taiwan suffers from insomnia likely caused by stress due to the economic woes, a figure higher than the global average, researchers said on Wednesday. The survey of 4,005 people found that 21.8 percent of the population has chronic trouble falling asleep or staying asleep, said Lee Hsin-chien, psychiatry ...

The number of Taiwanese suffering from chronic insomnia has nearly doubled in three years, as economic worries caused by the global downturn have brought more sleepless nights, according to a new study. Nearly five million, or 21.8 percent of the island's 23 million people, have chronic insomnia, compared with 11.5 percent three years ago, according to the ...

BOSTON (Reuters) - Drug labels in the United States often omit information showing the severity of side effects or that a medicine is not very effective, two doctors said Wednesday. The result can be a document skewed toward making a medicine seem safer and more effective than it really is, they wrote in a commentary in the New England Journal of ...

Michael Jackson's final days saw him plunge into desperate addiction, begging his doctor for drugs, including propofol, the "milk" that ultimately killed him, say investigators. Just weeks away from launching a series of 50 concerts in London to seal a comeback, revive his tarnished reputation and help lift him out of financial trouble, the King of Pop was tormented ...