How Acid Reflux Medications Can Affect Your Magnesium Levels
How Acid Reflux Medications Can Affect Your Magnesium Levels
The FDA has issued a medication ‘safety announcement’ to inform doctors and patients that prescription proton pump inhibitor (PPI) drugs, which are commonly used to treat people with reflux or GERD, may be associated with low serum magnesium levels (hypomagnesemia) if they are taken for long periods of time.
It is important to note that the FDA did not issue a recall or formal warning against using these medications today.
A review by the FDA, which seemed to focus on a small number of patients, simply found this association, which will now be added to the waning labels for these medications, which include:
- Nexium
- Prevacid and Prevacid 24HR
- Prilosec and Prilosec OTC
- Protonix
- Zegerid and Zegerid OTC
- Dexilant
- AcipHex
- Vimovo
Many of these reflux medications are commonly used in pediatrics, including Nexium, Prevacid, Prilosec, and Protonix. Some are even used on an off-label basis for infants under 12 months of age.
Does the new FDA safety announcement mean that you should stop giving your child these reflux medicines or that your pediatrician will no longer prescribe them? We will probably see few changes after this announcement.
The main change will likely be an increased awareness about the risk of low serum magnesium levels and symptoms of hypomagnesemia, such as an abnormal heart rate or rhythm, or symptoms such as a racing heartbeat, palpitations, muscle spasm, tremor or convulsions, and especially in children, fatigue, upset stomach, dizziness and lightheadedness.
Keep in mind that the risk for hypomagnesemia seems to be mostly in people taking a PPI reflux medications for long periods of time, and usually after at least a year of treatment. Since many kids take reflux medications for much shorter periods of time, they hopefully won’t be affected by hypomagnesemia. The FDA does suggest that doctors consider checking serum magnesium levels before prescribing these PPI reflux medications and regularly rechecking them for patients who are going to be on them for long periods of time.
If your child has chronic reflux and has been on a PPI reflux medicine for a long period of time, you may want to talk to your pediatrician or pediatric gastroenterologist to see if he needs a serum magnesium level. Also be careful about giving your kids OTC PPI reflux medicines on your own for long periods of time.
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