Women who take heartburn medication during pregnancy may increase their infants’ chances of developing asthma, new research has claimed.
A study team led by the Universities of Edinburgh, Scotland, and Tampere in Finland found the potential link after reviewing eight studies involving more than 1.3 million children – but the researchers also urged caution over the findings.
Writing in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, the team said that children whose mothers who had been prescribed acid-blocking drugs during pregnancy were at least one third more likely to have visited a doctor for symptoms of asthma.
However, Professor Aziz Sheikh, co-director of the Asthma UK Centre for Applied Research at the University of Edinburgh, said more studies needed to be carried out to ascertain if there is a conclusive link because it could be caused by a separate, linked factor.
“Our study reports an association between the onset of asthma in children and their mothers’ use of acid-suppressing medication during pregnancy,” he said.
“It is important to stress that this association does not prove that the medicines caused asthma in these children and further research is needed to better understand this link."
Dr Samantha Walker, director of policy and research at Asthma UK, said because the study is still at a very early stage, expectant mothers should continue to take heartburn medication under the medical guidance.
“We don’t yet know if the heartburn medication itself is contributing to the development of asthma in children, or if there is common factor we haven’t discovered yet that causes both heartburn in pregnant women and asthma in their children,” she said.
“The study points us towards something that needs further investigation which is why we need to see more research carried out into the causes of asthma, a condition that affects 5.4 million people in the UK alone.”
Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology 9 January 2017
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