\n<\/p>\n
Tens of thousands of prescriptions have been issued in England for a promising and non-addictive new sleeping pill, but doctors say NHS uptake is being held back by cost and patchy awareness.<\/p>\n
Daridorexant, approved last year, has been prescribed 67,000 times since November 2023, at an estimated cost of \u00a32.6m to the NHS. The drug has been hailed for helping people fall asleep faster, stay asleep longer and wake up clear-headed \u2013 without the dependency risks of traditional pills.<\/p>\n
But access is uneven. Prescribing is clustered in parts of London and the West Midlands, while some patients are turning to private care. By contrast, zopiclone \u2013 a far cheaper and potentially addictive alternative \u2013 was issued more than 7m times over the same period between November 2023 and June 2025. Nice had forecast the NHS would spend \u00a310.9m on daridorexant in the financial year 2024-25, but costs so far are much lower, about \u00a31.5m.<\/p>\n
Doctors also caution against seeing it as a magic bullet solution; while many patients see improvements, a sizeable minority do not. As with all drugs there are side-effects.<\/p>\n
Nice said 995,000 adults with insomnia were eligible for treatment with daridorexant based on expected population growth. They estimated 116,600 adults would start treatment with the drug in 2027-28 after adjusting for expected population growth.<\/p>\n
Prof Guy Leschziner, a consultant neurologist and leading sleep expert, called the drug \u201ca significant step forward\u201d. He said: \u201cUnlike traditional sleeping pills, this drug carries a low risk of dependency and does not cause rebound insomnia when stopped. Concerns have been raised about older sleeping tablets and long-term cognitive decline, but at present we don\u2019t see that risk with daridorexant.\u201d<\/p>\n
But he said the nature of prescription was cautious by design. He said: \u201cDoctors are urged to prioritise CBT-I (cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia), so tablets are only used if therapy fails, isn\u2019t available or isn\u2019t suitable. The problem is that access to CBT-I on the NHS is patchy, so many patients fall through the cracks.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cost is another sticking point. \u201cFourteen tablets of zopiclone cost the NHS 82p, compared with around \u00a342 for 30 daridorexant tablets,\u201d said Leschziner. \u201cIt\u2019s far easier to access privately, but within the NHS, hospitals bear the cost when specialists prescribe it \u2013 and that money has to be found from elsewhere in already stretched budgets.\u201d<\/p>\n
Daridorexant works by blocking orexin receptors, which drive wakefulness, so instead of forcing sedation like benzodiazepines, it simply removes the \u201cstay awake\u201d signal.<\/p>\n
Side-effects of daridorexant include headache, sleepiness or fatigue, dizziness and nausea. Less commonly, it may affect mood, cause abnormal dreams, or worsen depression in susceptible patients.<\/p>\n
Prof Colin Espie, an Oxford sleep medicine expert, said uptake had been slower than Nice predicted, though prescribing is now growing at about 12% a month.<\/p>\n
But he said: \u201cWhat\u2019s more pressing is the continued lack of access to the first-line treatment for insomnia, CBT-I. Access to second-line options like daridorexant matters, but patients deserve the most evidence-based care \u2013 and in this condition, that means therapy, not tablets.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dr Alanna Hare, the president of the British Sleep Society, said there was \u201calways a lag\u201d when new drugs were rolled out, though work was under way to raise awareness.<\/p>\n
She said cost-effectiveness had already been demonstrated in Nice\u2019s appraisal, adding: \u201cDaridorexant improves sleep by cutting night-time waking by about 20 minutes and sleep onset by 12 minutes, but more importantly, it boosts people\u2019s perception of sleep quality and their daytime functioning.\u201d<\/p>\n
She stressed that CBT-I remained the most effective treatment, benefiting about 80% of patients. \u201cEven brief behavioural interventions can work, and digital platforms like Sleepio and Sleepstation are vital to delivering CBT-I at scale,\u201d she said. \u201cDaridorexant should be seen as complementary to, not a replacement for, therapy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Leschziner said that while the \u201cmajority of patients see improvements with daridorexant\u201d, it does not work for \u201ca sizeable minority\u201d. He said: \u201cExpectations should therefore remain realistic, as it is not a wonder drug.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tens of thousands of prescriptions have been issued in England for a promising and non-addictive new sleeping pill, but doctors say NHS uptake is being held back by cost and patchy awareness. Daridorexant, approved last year, has been prescribed 67,000 times since November 2023, at an estimated cost of \u00a32.6m to the NHS. The drug<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21217,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[3874,13018,366,1229,13019,934,9875,8111],"class_list":{"0":"post-21216","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-access","9":"tag-daridorexant","10":"tag-doctors","11":"tag-nhs","12":"tag-patchy","13":"tag-pill","14":"tag-promising","15":"tag-sleeping"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21216\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/21217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}