Study Links Risk Of Asthma In Children To Use Of PPIs

Introduction

On Monday, a study was published in the medical journal JAMA Pediatrics in which Swedish researchers suggested that future breathing and respiratory risks are the potential adverse events that should be considered when prescribing proton-pump inhibitors (PPIs) to children.

The research, which was conducted with an objective to investigate the association between PPI use and risk of asthma in children included registry data collected in Sweden from January 1, 2007, to December 31, 2016.

An analysis was done from February 1 to September 1, 2020, on nearly 81,000 matched pairs of children and adolescents. The group included the ones who initiated PPI use and those who did not.

The findings revealed that the ones who started using the drug during the study period showed an asthma incidence rate of 21.8 events per 1,000 person-years as compared to just 4 events per 1,000 person-years among the ones who did not use the drug.

The drugs mentioned in the study that doubled the risk of asthma among child users was Protonix, which was followed by Nexium with a 64% increased risk of asthma. Prevacid and Prilosec were also found to increase the risk by just under 50%.

The researchers concluded that initiation of PPI use compared with nonuse was associated with an increased risk of asthma in children and the heartburn drugs should be prescribed to children only after weighing the potential benefit against potential harm.

Currently, more than 13,000 Nexium, Prilosec, Prevacid, and other PPI drug lawsuits are pending across the federal court system. The lawsuits, consolidated under MDL No. 2789, claim that the manufacturers failed to warn about the risk of acute kidney injury, chronic kidney disease, and end-stage renal failure associated with the heartburn medications.

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