Heartburn or ulcer pain can be effectively dealt with medications that target stomach acid. However, a study out of Austria has established a possible connection between these medications and a spike in allergies.
About the Study
Researchers from the Medical University of Vienna reviewed health insurance data from more than 8 million patients in Austria. They found an increase in allergens after patients took certain stomach medications.
The lead researcher involved in the study has studied the connection between allergies and stomach acid-targeting medications for years. Her first involvement in the issue involved a middle-aged man who complained of allergic reactions after eating caviar for the second time, including wheezing, swelling in his mouth and through and a reduced blood pressure. Allergies to caviar are rare with only a handful of known cases. The man had not experienced any allergic reactions seven years before the second time he ate them. The man knew at both of these times we was using anti-acid treatment.
The lead researcher of the study said that the man’s incidents point to his immune system becoming sensitized to caviar because he did not have enough stomach acid to break down the food. The case became a model case because for other foods, it was not as easy to single out specific factors.
The research team fed anti-acid medications and caviar to mice and found they developed allergies. When reviewing the patient information, the research confirmed the same trend with more common allergens. In some cases, allergens do not form until years later.
The study was published in the medical journal Nature Communications.
Study Findings
The research team found that prescriptions of anti-allergy medications went up substantially for those patients who were prescribed stomach acid inhibitors. These included H2 blockers and proton-pump inhibitors. This suggests that disrupting the stomach’s acids and enzymes may impact immune systems and cause allergies that were not existent before the use of the stomach medicines. This is likely because when a person takes anti-acids, stomach function that normally degrades food and bacteria is impaired and other substances enter the intestines that are not healthy for people. Undigested food may exit the stomach, causing the immune system to treat the foods as threats. Because food allergens are large proteins and no acid is available to degrade them, the large proteins enter the body and the immune system provides a response against them.
Another explanation for the connection between stomach medications and allergies is that the stomach acid inhibitors may cause an allergic bias toward certain seasonal allergens like grass pollen. Anti-acid drugs may go beyond the digestive system and act on immune cells that causes a release of pro-allergic substances.
Increase in Allergies
Many people have noticed that allergies are more common now than in previous generations. More than one in ten adults in the United States currently has a food allergy. Allergies are on the rise in industrialized countries. Researchers have blamed various causes for this increase, including climate change, sterilized homes and now gastric acid inhibitors. There is likely not a single factor to blame, according to medical professionals.
Patients have to carefully weigh the risk/benefit of using certain medications. For example, people with severe acid reflux may believe the tradeoff of managing this condition is worth the possibility of developing food allergens. However, people who use chronic medications may cause an unnecessary risk of developing food allergies. Children in medication is particularly concerning since this could cause the promotion of food allergies that affect children for the rest of their lives. Food allergies can sometimes cause serious side effects and some are even life-threatening.
Acid inhibitors have been connected to other serious side effects, including stroke, kidney failure and death. Patients should discuss the risks of taking medications with their doctor before beginning a regimen.
