Maybe the FDA warning woke some people.

The move by the agency to include various strange warnings on the product labeling - sleep eating, sleep walking and sleep sex - was issued on Wed., March 14. And guess what? For the week ending March 16, new prescriptions written for each and every sleeping pill declined.

For Ambien, new scrips fell 3.1 percent and for Lunesta, new scrips dropped 4.8 percent. For Sonata, the decline was 3.3 percent and new scrips for Rozerem slid 2.4 percent, says Mike King, an analyst at Rodman & Renshaw, in an investor note in which he cites IMS Health data.

Okay, the FDA warning was issued just two days before the week wrapped up, so one can argue it may not have caused an across-the-board decline. On the other hand, all but three pills - Sonata, Ambien and Restoril - still show new scrip growth on a month-over-month basis through March 16. In other words, the whole category was rolling along until then.

If the trend reverses, blame it on sleep prescribing: doctors who give in and write prescriptions after patients badger them into a somnambulistic state.

Here’s the FDA warning.

[tags]Ambien, King Pharmaceuticals, Lunesta, Rozerem, Sanofi-Aventis, Sepracor, Sonata, Takeda Pharmaceuticals[/tags]