It’s enough to give you heartburn
Wonder drugs they may be, but PPIs are overprescribed and pose some health risks
By Nathan Seppa
In the arms race against heartburn, one class of drug outperforms the competition by going straight to the source. The proton pump inhibitors, PPIs for short, block acid manufacture at the subcellular level. In contrast, acid reflux drugs such as Tums and Maalox neutralize the acid. Others, like Zantac and Tagamet, slow down its production by blocking the histamine 2-receptor. PPIs do require a day or two to start suppressing the symptoms of acid reflux. But once PPIs kick in, they put out the fire with stunning efficiency.
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“No question about it. They are far more effective than anything we had before,” says Randolph Regal, a clinical pharmacist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
When PPIs first hit the market in the 1980s, the acid-blocking pills — sold as Nexium, Prilosec and Aciphex, among other brand names — looked like wonder drugs. Since then, U.S. sales of PPIs have grown to roughly $14 billion a year.