Fears that they are linked to cancer have circulated for decades
The new study has dismissed a link(Image: Vilin Visuals via Getty Images)
People who use anti-acid medication over a long period of time may not be at an increased risk of stomach cancer, a new study suggests. Proton pump inhibitors (PPI) are a commonly prescribed medication to treat acid reflux and ulcers.
Fears that these drugs are linked to gastric cancers have been circulating since the 1980s, when the drugs first came to the market. Previous studies have indicated there is a link between PPIs and stomach cancers.
But researchers said previous work is “hampered by several methodological limitations, making this possible association uncertain”. As a result they set out to examine the link through a new study which was designed to “consider all the main limitations of the existing literature”.
Experts, led by researchers at the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, looked at data from all patients with gastric and oesophagus cancer from Denmark; Norway; Finland; Iceland and Sweden between 1994 and 2000. The study included more than 17,000 people diagnosed with stomach cancer, which were compared to 170,000 people who did not have stomach cancer.
Long-term use of PPIs – over more than a year – was recorded in 10% of people with stomach cancer and 9.5% of people without. “No association was found between long-term proton pump inhibitor use and gastric adenocarcinoma,” they wrote in The BMJ.
They said that previous studies linking PPI use to stomach cancer may have been skewed because they included PPI use initiated shortly before a cancer diagnosis; the studies looked at short-term prescribing and a lack of accounting for other variables.
The authors wrote: “This finding should offer relief for patients needing long-term proton pump inhibitor therapy and is valuable for clinical decision making in healthcare settings.”
But they added: “However, long-term proton pump inhibitor use might cause side effects and increase the risk of some other potentially serious conditions such as Clostridium difficile associated diarrhoea, osteoporosis, and vitamin or electrolyte malabsorption.”