Link to study: American Academy of Neurology
After adjusting for factors such as age, sex and race, as well as health-related factors such as high blood pressure and diabetes, researchers found people who had been taking acid reflux drugs for more than 4.4 years had a 33% higher risk of developing dementia than people who never took the drugs.
“A buzzy new study on heartburn meds and dementia doesn’t actually clarify anything”
https://www.vox.com/health/2023/8/10/23827408/dementia-heartburn-proton-pump-inhibitors-ppi-prilosec
“Importantly, the study comes on the heels of several larger, higher-quality studies showing the exact opposite of its conclusions — namely, that these medications do not portend an increased risk of dementia.”
Thank you for that. I take anti heartburn meds due to acid reflux and glad to hear not going get dementia from it.
Sir, this is a Wendy’s.
“If acid reflux is not controlled well, it can cause a variety of complications, including cancer at a later stage,” said Desai. So people should not be ditching their heartburn medications en masse based on alarming headlines.
While that’s true, it’s also apparent that Doctors in the US massively overprescrbe medicines for conditions that are often better addressed through lifestyle changes. Acid reflux is one.
Unfortunately, acid reflux can’t always be resolved with lifestyle changes. But it probably can in most cases.
The Vox article does a better job of communicating the findings without the hyperbolic headline. The study wasn’t explicitly designed to look for association. Nonetheless, the data is there.
Neither study does a particularly good job determining causality. The higher quality study was limited in time (3 years) and participant age but perhaps the findings also broadly apply.