ABSTRACT
Benzodiazepines are a class of central nervous system (CNS) depressant drugs used as anxiolytic drugs, but also as sedato-hypnotics, anticonvulsants, muscle relaxants, or anesthetic drugs. The benzodiazepine group consists of 1,4-benzodiazepines (diazolobenzodiazepines), 1,5-benzodiazepines, triazolobenzodiazepines, imidazo-1,4-benzodiazepines, and thienodiazepines. This class of drugs has a wide range of both therapeutic potency and elimination half-lives and are the most widely prescribed drugs in the world. Since the discovery of benzodiazepines as anxiolytics in the 1960s, the classical structures of this class of compounds have been widely varied, resulting in benzodiazepine ligands that bind to specic subtypes of the GABAA receptors (Singh et al. 2010).
