Are Your Heartburn Medicines Damaging Your Kidneys and Brain?
Taking heartburn drugs for a long time has been linked to severe kidney & brain diseases, including kidney failure. Sudden onset of this kidney problem sometimes serves as the red flag for the doctors to discontinue the use of so-called proton pump inhibitors of patients sold under Prilosec, Prevacid, Protonix, and Nexium, among others. People who take these PPIs and their doctors should be vigilant in monitoring the use of these specific medications.
Details about those drugs and their impact:
New research suggests that the type of heartburn medication, generally known as proton pump inhibitors, can also be linked to long-term kidney injury.
Prilosec, Prevacid, Nexium belong to this specific class of drugs that treat heartburn & acid reflux by lowering the particular amount of the acid produced by a stomach.According to background notes, Porton pumps inhibitors were utilized by a maximum of fifteen million people in one country. But as many as seventy percent of these prescriptions also have been handed out inappropriately, and twenty-five percent of long-term users also could stop taking the specific medication without suffering enhanced heartburn or acid reflux, the research authors said.
Use of these specific prescription heartburn drugs already has been linked to short-term kidney issues like acute kidney damage and the inflammatory kidney problem called acute interstitial.
Newer researches now show the link between the drugs & chronic kidney problem, in which kidneys lose their ability to filter the blood effectively.
Effect of these drugs on the kidney
Over time, chronic kidney disease can also lead to kidney failure, forcing some people to undergo regular dialysis and possibly kidney transplant, according to the National Institute of Health.
In this new research, the researchers utilized data on the self-reported proton pump inhibitors used among more than ten thousand people taking part in the national study on the hardening of arteries. Also, the researchers evaluated data on outpatient PPI prescriptions among near two lakhs fifty thousand patients of the health care system.
From the very beginning, the researchers noted that the PPI users in both groups were more likely to have health issues, like obesity, high blood pressure and heart problems, and neuron problems.
In every group, the researchers associated the drugs with the enhanced risk of chronic kidney disease over ten years.
Researchers also compared the people using the drugs once daily with those who utilized them twice a day. They discovered twice-daily use was also associated with the forty-six percent enhanced risk of chronic kidney disease versus the fifteen percent improved risk in those taking one regular dose.
No one is sure how these drugs could damage the kidneys, but many leading theories exist. Medications can also cause magnesium levels to decline in the human body. The lack of this essential mineral could also be harmed over time if the patients suffer repeated bouts of acute kidney inflammation due to the proton pump inhibitors.
Already Gastroenterologists use cautious regarding the utilization of the drugs, just because they have been tied to other health issues like bone fracture & infections of C. difficile and pneumonia.
Over five years of the follow-up, some researchers discovered that more than eighty percent of PPI users did not develop acute kidney issues that sometimes are reversible and characterized by too little urine leaving the human body, fatigue & swelling in the ankles, and legs.
But, more than half of the cases of chronic kidney damage & end stage renal disease also associated with PPI use happened in people without acute kidney issues.
In contrast, among new users of H2 blockers, 7.67 percent developed chronic kidney problems in the absence of acute kidney issues, and 1.27 percent developed & stage renal disease. End stage disease happens when the kidneys can no longer effectively erase waste from the human body. In these specific cases, dialysis or a kidney transplant is required to keep that patient alive.
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