Heartburn drugs may contribute to allergies, says new studyJuly 31, 2019 - 18:39 AMT PanARMENIAN.Net - When heartburn or ulcer pain strikes, drugs can target stomach acid to calm bellies and offer relief. But a new study suggests the medications may come with a hive-inducing side effect: allergies, CBS reports. After analyzing health insurance data from more than 8 million people in Austria, researchers found that prescriptions of anti-allergy medications surged in those who were prescribed stomach acid inhibitors, a class of drugs that includes proton-pump inhibitors and H2 blockers. The findings, published Tuesday in the medical journal Nature Communications, suggest that disrupting the stomach’s delicate balance of acids and enzymes may cause our immune systems to go haywire, triggering allergies that didn’t previously exist. “We need to have the general awareness that the stomach has an important digestive function, and it has a kind of sterilizing function,” said Dr. Erika Jensen-Jarolim, the study’s lead author and a professor at the Medical University of Vienna. “What we get in terms of food and bacteria is actually denatured and degraded in normal stomach function,” she told CNN. “When you take anti-acids, this function is impaired, and we have a wide-open window, and many things enter the intestines that are not good.” It’s not entirely understood how the medications contribute to allergies, but one explanation may be that reduced stomach acid allows undigested food to sneak out of our stomachs. Our immune systems, in turn, can see those foods as a threat. “Food allergens are large proteins, they’re part of large complexes, and we know that when anything we eat hits the stomach, it gets degraded,” said Dr. Caroline Sokol, a physician and researcher at Massachusetts General Hospital who was not involved in the study. “If you do not have any acid,” she said, “you can imagine you’ve got these big chunks of protein that might get through a leaky gut wall. If you’re showing your immune system these whole proteins that it can’t usually see, then you’re at a higher risk of potentially developing an immune response against them.” Gastric acid inhibitors may also induce an “allergic bias” in patients toward seasonal troublemakers like grass pollen, Jensen-Jarolim said. “There is evidence that anti-acid drugs don’t just act on the digestive system, but they also act on immune cells, causing a release of pro-allergic substances.” Related links: Top stories Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev arrived in Moscow on April 22 to hold talks with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin. Authorities said a total of 192 Azerbaijani troops were killed and 511 were wounded during Azerbaijan’s offensive. In 2023, the Azerbaijani government will increase the country’s defense budget by more than 1.1 billion manats ($650 million). The bill, published on Monday, is designed to "eliminate the shortcomings of an unreasonably broad interpretation of the key concept of "compatriot". Partner news | Armenia named European U18 chess vice-champion The U18 chess team of Armenia won the title of vice-champion of the European Team Championship. MEPs issue statement to defend Armenia-France military cooperation The deputies emphasized that having an army armed with combat and modern military equipment is the sovereign right of any country. WFP, EDB, Yeremyan Farm to expand Milk in Schools project in Armenia The partnership aims to establish a cooperative framework to assess the feasibility of the initiative. Moody's upgrades IDBank's rating Moody's has upgraded ID Bank CJSC's (IDBank) long-term local and foreign currency bank deposit ratings to Ba3 from B1. |