by Claudia Boyd-Barrett posted in Pregnancy

Taking certain antacids during pregnancy could increase the risk of your baby developing asthma, a new study suggests.
Heartburn and indigestion are common during pregnancy, and some women take over-the-counter antacids or are prescribed antacids by their doctor. The recent study, published in the journal Pediatrics, examined the impact of two types of antacids: proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) such as Prilosec and Prevacid, and histamine-2 receptor antagonists (H2RAs) such as Pepcid and Zantac.
Researchers pooled data from 8 other studies involving more than 1.6 million women in Europe and Israel. They concluded that women taking PPIs during pregnancy had a 34 percent increased risk of having children who developed asthma than women who didn't take these drugs. Women who took H2RAs during pregnancy had an even higher risk: they were 57 percent more likely than women who didn't take the drugs to have a child who developed asthma, the researchers concluded.

The researchers controlled for factors that could influence asthma risk in children, such as a family history of asthma, the mother's age, and whether she smoked.
Nevertheless, the studies the researchers reviewed weren't perfect. They relied on government health and prescription records and couldn't control for every factor that might have influenced children's asthma risk. What's more, the research doesn't prove that antacids cause asthma. It could be, for example, that indig...