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Heartburn Drugs (Prilosec, Prevacid & Nexium) Linked to Severe Diarrhea & Colitis - ANTACIDS ARE DANGEROUS!
posted Wednesday, 21 December 2005
Heartburn Drugs (Prilosec, Prevacid & Nexium)
Linked to Severe Diarrhea & Colitis -
ANTACIDS ARE DANGEROUS!
Heartburn Drugs Linked to Diarrhea
By LINDSEY TANNER
AP Medical Writer
December 20, 2005, 9:38 AM EST
CHICAGO -- Holiday revelers beware: Seasonal indulgences like eggnog and fruitcake might give you heartburn, but the acid-fighting medicine you take for relief might lead to something worse, researchers say.
People on popular prescription heartburn drugs -- Prilosec, Prevacid and Nexium -- seem more prone to getting a potentially dangerous diarrhea caused by the bug Clostridium difficile, new research shows. C-diff, as it's known, can cause severe diarrhea and crampy intestinal inflammation called colitis.
Dr. Sandra Dial and colleagues at McGill University in Montreal examined data on more than 18,000 patients in the United Kingdom from 1994 to 2004. During that time, 1,672 cases of C-diff were diagnosed, and the numbers increased from less than 1 per 100,000 in 1994 to 22 per 100,000 last year.
Patients with prescriptions for powerful acid-fighters called proton pump inhibitors, which include Prilosec and Prevacid, were almost three times more likely to be diagnosed with the bug than those not taking the drugs. Those on less potent prescription drugs called H2 receptor antagonists, which include Pepcid and Zantac, were two times more likely than nonusers to get C-diff infections.
The widely used and heavily promoted drugs reduce levels of gastric acid that can keep C-diff germs at bay.
Dr. L. Clifford McDonald, a researcher at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said proton pump inhibitors recently were implicated in a C-diff outbreak at a hospital and nursing homes in Maine.
"It's not surprising in my mind that there could be some association" with acid-fighting drugs, said McDonald, who was not involved in Dial's study. If there is, "I do think it would be very important because, boy, everyone and their brother seems to be on them."
Most study patients hadn't been recently hospitalized and weren't taking antibiotics, which both can increase risks for C-difficile infections.
Also, most patients hadn't been diagnosed with ulcers or acid reflux, so it's possible many simply had heartburn, Dial said.
"Heartburn in and of itself isn't dangerous," and can often be treated with less potent drugs, Dial said.
Her study appears in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association.
A co-author is a consultant for AstraZeneca PLC, which markets Prilosec and Nexium, and Altana Pharma, which makes and markets another prescription heartburn drug, Protonix, in Europe. A spokesman for Wyeth, which markets Protonix in the United States, said the company hadn't seen the research and declined comment.
AstraZeneca spokeswoman Cindy Callaghan said patient safety is the company's top priority and that the findings are not the final word.
"Further research is needed in this particular area to determine the validity of a potential link," she said.
C-diff bacteria historically have been found in patients on antibiotics or with underlying illnesses, especially those in hospitals or nursing homes, but infections increasingly have been reported in the community.
Doctors think the growing trend is due in part to overuse of antibiotics but the new data suggest overuse of acid-fighting drugs may be another reason, said Dr. Michael Brown, a gastroenterologist at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, who was not involved in the study.
The drugs are popular because they are so effective at fighting stomach acid, and are generally very safe, Brown said. Tabacco doesn't think so; maybe Brown should read this Article!
Brown said short-term use of potent acid-fighting drugs for occasional over-imbibing is unlikely to increase infection risks in otherwise healthy people, but that the results suggest doctors and patients "have to think twice about using such heavy acid suppression" over the long term.
http://www.newsday.com/news/health/wire/sns-ap-heartburn-drugs,0,5911348.story?coll=sns-ap-health-headlines
Tabacco has never ingested Tums, Phillips Milk of Magnesia, Prilosec, Prevacid, Nexium nor any other antacid. My 9th grade Biology instructor, Mrs. Becker, told our class that stomach acid was there for a purpose – to kill germs. When you neutralize stomach acid with an antacid, you allow the food in your stomach to rot and the germs to grow and multiply (after all, you are feeding them, aren’t you?)
The antacid industry is one built entirely on a LIE!
It’s a bad idea, but pharmaceutical companies don’t care about that. They are not in business to help consumers; they are in business to make profit. If, incidentally, they perform some positive function, so much the better. However, it is not a prerequisite.
Please note that tobacco companies have the same perspective. They even cause death, then have the temerity to make anti-smoking TV ads while washing their hands and absolving themselves of all guilt, as did Pontius Pilate. Sorry, Philip Morris!
If any group must be controlled, supervised and restrained by government, it is big business. Unrestrained capitalism is the most virulent and evil endeavor ever created by mankind. Even with restraint by government, capitalist giants circumvent the law and steal from all of us, if not commit murder in the name of profit.
But the Bushites, Neocons and Republicans all cry, “get government out of business’ way”. You are fools to listen to that propaganda. You are fools to listen to any Republican politician. They are owned, body and soul, by big business. Then they pack the Supreme Court with “conservatives”, who will rubber stamp any venal plot they concoct. If things get even worse than they are now, maybe enough voters will get as sick of Republicans as I am and vote the bastards out of the Presidency for 20 years as they did after the Great Depression of 1929. And it was longer than that before they controlled Congress again.
TABACCO PROFITEER AXIOM: Never listen solely to anyone, who stands to make a profit from the advice they give you. You are a fool if you do!
They may lie to you by what they don’t tell you (omission) as much as by what they do say (commission). How dumb can you be to fall for that con where the commercial shows young, attractive people enjoying sports and smiling as if they were having great sex, while smoking cigarettes or after having ingested an antacid, which may have relieved the initial problem, but may cause infinitely worse side effects later on. Did you really expect to see an operating room with a patient’s insides hanging outside?
And while we’re on the subject, what does Michael Jordan know about men’s underwear that you don’t know? Sorry, Hanes.
T.A.B.A.C.C.O. (Truth About Business And Congressional Crimes Organization)
Linked to Severe Diarrhea & Colitis -
ANTACIDS ARE DANGEROUS!
Heartburn Drugs Linked to Diarrhea
By LINDSEY TANNER
AP Medical Writer
December 20, 2005, 9:38 AM EST
CHICAGO -- Holiday revelers beware: Seasonal indulgences like eggnog and fruitcake might give you heartburn, but the acid-fighting medicine you take for relief might lead to something worse, researchers say.
People on popular prescription heartburn drugs -- Prilosec, Prevacid and Nexium -- seem more prone to getting a potentially dangerous diarrhea caused by the bug Clostridium difficile, new research shows. C-diff, as it's known, can cause severe diarrhea and crampy intestinal inflammation called colitis.
Dr. Sandra Dial and colleagues at McGill University in Montreal examined data on more than 18,000 patients in the United Kingdom from 1994 to 2004. During that time, 1,672 cases of C-diff were diagnosed, and the numbers increased from less than 1 per 100,000 in 1994 to 22 per 100,000 last year.
Patients with prescriptions for powerful acid-fighters called proton pump inhibitors, which include Prilosec and Prevacid, were almost three times more likely to be diagnosed with the bug than those not taking the drugs. Those on less potent prescription drugs called H2 receptor antagonists, which include Pepcid and Zantac, were two times more likely than nonusers to get C-diff infections.
The widely used and heavily promoted drugs reduce levels of gastric acid that can keep C-diff germs at bay.
Dr. L. Clifford McDonald, a researcher at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said proton pump inhibitors recently were implicated in a C-diff outbreak at a hospital and nursing homes in Maine.
"It's not surprising in my mind that there could be some association" with acid-fighting drugs, said McDonald, who was not involved in Dial's study. If there is, "I do think it would be very important because, boy, everyone and their brother seems to be on them."
Most study patients hadn't been recently hospitalized and weren't taking antibiotics, which both can increase risks for C-difficile infections.
Also, most patients hadn't been diagnosed with ulcers or acid reflux, so it's possible many simply had heartburn, Dial said.
"Heartburn in and of itself isn't dangerous," and can often be treated with less potent drugs, Dial said.
Her study appears in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association.
A co-author is a consultant for AstraZeneca PLC, which markets Prilosec and Nexium, and Altana Pharma, which makes and markets another prescription heartburn drug, Protonix, in Europe. A spokesman for Wyeth, which markets Protonix in the United States, said the company hadn't seen the research and declined comment.
AstraZeneca spokeswoman Cindy Callaghan said patient safety is the company's top priority and that the findings are not the final word.
"Further research is needed in this particular area to determine the validity of a potential link," she said.
C-diff bacteria historically have been found in patients on antibiotics or with underlying illnesses, especially those in hospitals or nursing homes, but infections increasingly have been reported in the community.
Doctors think the growing trend is due in part to overuse of antibiotics but the new data suggest overuse of acid-fighting drugs may be another reason, said Dr. Michael Brown, a gastroenterologist at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, who was not involved in the study.
The drugs are popular because they are so effective at fighting stomach acid, and are generally very safe, Brown said. Tabacco doesn't think so; maybe Brown should read this Article!
Brown said short-term use of potent acid-fighting drugs for occasional over-imbibing is unlikely to increase infection risks in otherwise healthy people, but that the results suggest doctors and patients "have to think twice about using such heavy acid suppression" over the long term.
http://www.newsday.com/news/health/wire/sns-ap-heartburn-drugs,0,5911348.story?coll=sns-ap-health-headlines
Tabacco has never ingested Tums, Phillips Milk of Magnesia, Prilosec, Prevacid, Nexium nor any other antacid. My 9th grade Biology instructor, Mrs. Becker, told our class that stomach acid was there for a purpose – to kill germs. When you neutralize stomach acid with an antacid, you allow the food in your stomach to rot and the germs to grow and multiply (after all, you are feeding them, aren’t you?)
The antacid industry is one built entirely on a LIE!
It’s a bad idea, but pharmaceutical companies don’t care about that. They are not in business to help consumers; they are in business to make profit. If, incidentally, they perform some positive function, so much the better. However, it is not a prerequisite.
Please note that tobacco companies have the same perspective. They even cause death, then have the temerity to make anti-smoking TV ads while washing their hands and absolving themselves of all guilt, as did Pontius Pilate. Sorry, Philip Morris!
If any group must be controlled, supervised and restrained by government, it is big business. Unrestrained capitalism is the most virulent and evil endeavor ever created by mankind. Even with restraint by government, capitalist giants circumvent the law and steal from all of us, if not commit murder in the name of profit.
But the Bushites, Neocons and Republicans all cry, “get government out of business’ way”. You are fools to listen to that propaganda. You are fools to listen to any Republican politician. They are owned, body and soul, by big business. Then they pack the Supreme Court with “conservatives”, who will rubber stamp any venal plot they concoct. If things get even worse than they are now, maybe enough voters will get as sick of Republicans as I am and vote the bastards out of the Presidency for 20 years as they did after the Great Depression of 1929. And it was longer than that before they controlled Congress again.
TABACCO PROFITEER AXIOM: Never listen solely to anyone, who stands to make a profit from the advice they give you. You are a fool if you do!
They may lie to you by what they don’t tell you (omission) as much as by what they do say (commission). How dumb can you be to fall for that con where the commercial shows young, attractive people enjoying sports and smiling as if they were having great sex, while smoking cigarettes or after having ingested an antacid, which may have relieved the initial problem, but may cause infinitely worse side effects later on. Did you really expect to see an operating room with a patient’s insides hanging outside?
And while we’re on the subject, what does Michael Jordan know about men’s underwear that you don’t know? Sorry, Hanes.
T.A.B.A.C.C.O. (Truth About Business And Congressional Crimes Organization)
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