Children, Asthma, and Proton Pump Inhibitors
Costs and Perils of Therapeutic Creep
- Author Affiliations: Arizona Respiratory Center, BIO5 Institute and Clinical and Translational Science Institute, University of Arizona, Tucson.
Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text.
- KEYWORDS:
- ASTHMA
- CHILDREN'S HEALTH
- DRUG REACTION, ADVERSE
- GASTROESOPHAGEAL REFLUX
- LANSOPRAZOLE
- PATIENT SAFETY
- PROTON PUMP INHIBITORS
- RANDOMIZED CONTROLLED TRIAL
Children with asthma report symptoms of gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) more often than children without asthma.1 Nevertheless, a systematic review of the child health literature, which included studies using pH probes and other objective assessment methods, concluded that the true nature of the association between GERD and asthma, their temporal relation, and the causal direction, remain unknown.2 Moreover, the potential for antiacid therapy to improve asthma symptoms in children with poorly controlled disease remains largely anecdotal. A small, randomized placebo-controlled trial showed no improvement in asthma status among children treated with omeprazole for 12 weeks.3
Despite this unimpressive evidence of a consistent role of GER/GERD in asthma morbidity, children with asthma are more likely than those without asthma to be treated with anti-GERD medications. For example, a population-based study4 suggested that 13- to 14-year-old schoolchildren with asthma were more than 8 times more likely to be …
