Acid-Suppressing Drugs Tied to Later Use of Anti-Allergy Drugs

By Kelly Young

Edited by David G. Fairchild, MD, MPH, and Lorenzo Di Francesco, MD, FACP, FHM

Patients who take prescription drugs to suppress gastric acid are more likely to subsequently use anti-allergic drugs, suggests a study in Nature Communications.

Using Austrian insurance claims data, researchers compared adults who filled any prescription for a gastric acid-inhibiting drug (including proton-pump inhibitors and H2 receptor antagonists) with those who hadn't filled such prescriptions from 2009 to 2013. They found that users of gastric acid-inhibiting drugs were significantly more likely than nonusers to subsequently fill prescriptions for anti-allergic drugs (5.1% vs. 2.6%).

The authors conclude: "Our findings confirm an epidemiological association between gastric acid suppression and development of allergic symptoms, in line with previous mechanistic animal trials and human observational studies."