Heartburn Drug Linked to Bad Breath

If you take drugs like Prilosec or Prevacid to treat your chronic heartburn or acid reflux disease, you may end up with another unwanted problem -- bad breath.

New research reveals the class of medication that includes those drugs -- known as proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) -- is linked to halitosis or bad breath.

PPIs reduce the production of acid by blocking the enzyme in the wall of the stomach that produces acid.

Doctors in Brazil studied 23 adult patients with acid reflux disease (GERD) and 17 patients with indigestion. They found 39 percent of the GERD patients had bad breath, and in at least 75 percent of the cases, taking a PPI was one of the reasons. Also, 18 percent of indigestion patients had bad breath.

Heartburn Drugs Might Slow Heart Failure

Over-the-counter antihistamine drugs used to treat heartburn and acid reflux might be useful against chronic heart failure, a Japanese study suggests.

It's a small study, including only 50 patients. But the results point to possible benefits for many of the 23 million Americans with heart failure, a potentially fatal condition in which the heart cannot pump blood effectively, said a report in the Oct. 3 issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

"It's still very early, because we know very little about who might benefit from it or what drugs might be best,"...

More details here...