New research suggests drugs meant to ease heartburn could actually elevate one's risk of heart attack.
A large data-mining study determined proton-pump inhibitors, which are among the world's most widely prescribed drugs, found they are associated with an increased risk of heart attack, Stanford University Medical Center reported. The class of heartburn drugs called H2 blockers was not found to raise heart attack risk. These drugs have been on the market for longer than PPIs, and are the second largest-selling class of heartburn drugs.
"The association we found with PPI use and increased chances of a subsequent heart attack doesn't in and of itself prove causation," said the study's lead author, Nigam Shah, an assistant professor of biomedical informatics and assistant director of the Stanford Center for Biomedical Informatics Research.
Despite the uncertainty, the conclusion is based on the electronic health records of almost three million people and the team urges that it be taken seriously, especially since PPIs are now available over the counter. In the study, the team looked at subsequent heart-attack frequencies of those who were either prescribed PPIs, or claimed to be using them, and compared these events with those seen in heartburn sufferers not taking PPIs. The researchers observed a 16 to 21 percetn increased in the rate of heart attacks in the PPI group.
In another study, researchers looked at 1,500 patients with chest pain, shortness of breath or abnormal stress-test results. They found the patients in this sample who took PPIs had more than a doubled risk of suffering a major subsequent cardiovascular event.
"These drugs may not be as safe as we think," said Nicholas Leeper, the study's senior author and an assistant professor of vascular surgery and of cardiovascular medicine.
Past research has suggested PPIs can impede the production of nitric oxide in the endothelial cells that line the body's blood vessels, which could contribute to the elevated heart disease risk.
The findings were published in a recent edition of the journal PLOS ONE.
