Proton Pump Inhibitors May Increase Heart Attack Risk

The New York Times (6/11, Bakalar) “Well” blog reports that research published in PLOS One suggests that “proton pump inhibitors...may increase the risk for heart attack.”

        The Washington Post (6/11, Bernstein) “To Your Health” blog reports that “after combing through 16 million electronic records of 2.9 million patients in two separate databases,” investigators “found that people who take the medication to suppress the release of stomach acid are 16 percent to 21 percent more likely to” experience a heart attack. Nicholas J. Leeper, an author of the study, “said the Food and Drug Administration ‘should be aware of these findings,’ but agreed that only a large, prospective clinical study...could establish whether the drugs are actually causing more heart attacks.”

        On its website, CBS News (6/11, Seidman) reports, however, that “analysis of patients using another type of antacid drugs called H2 blockers...did not show this increased risk.” The study received funding from The National Institutes of Health.

        Medscape (6/11, Pullen) reports that in an email to Medscape Medical News, Joel Rubenstein, MD, chair of the American Gastroenterological Association Institute Clinical Practice Section, wrote, “I would advise against making any changes in the management of patients based on this study. The results are intriguing and deserve further study. But the signal of an association is a weak one, and could easily be due to confounding by other factors, such as obesity, or due to initial misdiagnosis of angina as [gastroesophageal reflux disease].”