Common drugs used to treat heartburn, stomach ulcers and acid reflux may up the risk of kidney failure, finds a new research study.

Proton-pump inhibitors (PPIs) are a class of drugs which reduces the amount of gastric acid produced and is fundamental in treating gastric disorders. The study suggests that long-term usage of this medication can lead to kidney failure and other kidney related diseases.

About 15 million Americans are estimated to have prescriptions for PPIs, although this number could be easily higher as these drugs can be simply availed over the counter without any prescriptions.

The study was conducted by researchers from Washington University in St. Louis and at the Clinical Epidemiology Center at the VA St. Louis Health Care System.

"[Patients should] use PPIs only when it is medically necessary, and should limit duration of exposure to the minimum necessary to treat the underlying medical condition," said study author Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly of the Clinical Epidemiology Center at the VA Saint Louis Health Care System.

For the purpose of the study, two groups were compared. One group constituted of 173,000 patients who were newly prescribed PPIs whereas the other group consisted of 20,000 patients who were newly prescribed an alternate drug to treat the similar gastric disorders, namely H2 receptor blockers.

The data for both these groups were analyzed from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs national databases.

After a period of five years, data analysis interestingly revealed that 15 percent of people using PPIs had been diagnosed with chronic kidney disease, as against 11 percent of those on H2-blockers. After weighing out other factors such as age and other diseases, it translated to a 28 percent greater risk of developing chronic kidney disease for PPI users.

Further, the same group of PPI users had a 96 percent increased risk of developing kidney failure as compared to patients who took the histamine H2 receptor blockers.

Another similar study that was carried out recently by researchers from Johns Hopkins University also arrived at a similar conclusion linking an increased risk of kidney damage associated with the increased dosage of PPIs. The study was published in JAMA Internal Medicine on January 2016.

The new study has been published in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology.

Photo: Will Culpepper | Flickr