Study Links Heartburn Drugs to Stomach Cancer and Fatal Heart and Kidney Disease

More than 15 million Americans have prescriptions for PPIs. Further, many millions more purchase the drugs over the counter and take them without being under a doctor's care and often indefinitely. The researchers also found that such risk increases with the duration of PPI use, even when the drugs are taken at low doses. The study is published online May 30 in the journal The BMJ. "Taking PPIs over many months or years is not safe, and now we have a clearer picture of the health conditions associated with long-term PPI use," said senior author Ziyad Al-Aly, MD, an assistant professor of medicine at the School of Medicine. He has led several studies associating PPIs to chronic kidney disease and an increased risk of death. Other researchers independently have linked PPIs to adverse health problems such as dementia, bone fractures, heart disease and pneumonia, among others. PPIs -- sold under brand names such as Prevacid, Prilosec, Nexium and Protonix -- bring relief by reducing gastric acid. PPIs are among the most commonly used classes of drugs in the U.S. For the study, researchers sifted through de-identified medical records in a database maintained by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Examining medical data acquired from July 2002 to June 2004, the researchers identified 157,625 people -- mostly Caucasian men ages 65 and older -- who had been newly prescribed PPIs, and 56,842 people who had been newly prescribed another class of acid-suppression drugs known as H2 blockers. They followed the patients -- 214,467 in total -- for up to 10 years. The researchers found a 17 percent increased risk of death in the PPI group compared with the H2 blocker group. They calculated 45 excess deaths attributable to long-term PPI use per 1,000 people. Death rates for PPIs were 387 per 1,000 people, and death rates for H2 blockers were 342 per 1,000. "Given the millions of people who take PPIs regularly, this translates into thousan https://www.technologynetworks.com/drug-discovery/news/study-links-heartburn-drugs-to-stomach-cancer-and-fatal-heart-and-kidney-disease-320064?utm_campaign=NEWSLETTER_TN_Breaking%20Science%20News&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=73226030&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-_QLFTzUREhbRgAK9efPHsAY8KZR2IqPa_SPPV-CFgw9v3c9ct1F4Wi2T9ATzwH4PE4RNo8rPLPBA4lBvxgPo-DufjbvA&_hsmi=73226030