Some Acid Reflux Drugs Linked to C. diff Sept. 21, 2011 (Chicago) -- The popular class of acid refluxmedication that includes Aciphex, Dexilant, Nexium, Prevacid, Prilosec, and Protonix is associated with an increased risk of diarrhea caused by the bug Clostridium difficile(C. diff).

Japanese researchers followed about 500 hospitalized patients, over half of whom were taking these drugs, called proton pump inhibitors (PPIs).

Those who were taking PPIs were more than three times as likely to develop C. diffdiarrhea as those who were not taking them.

Still, the risk of any individual patient developing the infection was relatively low, says researcher Takatoshi Kitazawa, MD, of Teiko University in Tokyo.

Overall, 19 of 487 PPI users developed C. diff diarrhea, compared with four of 329 people who didn't take the acid-lowering drugs.

That's potentially tens of thousands of cases a year, Kitazawa says.

The findings were reported here at the Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy.

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