Health: Side Effect: Pneumonia?

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Taking Nexium, Prevacid or Prilosec--the so-called proton-pump inhibitors widely prescribed for heartburn--can keep acid-reflux disease in check. But a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association says they may put you at risk for pneumonia. Dutch researchers studied more than 360,000 patients and found that users of the powerful acid-fighting drugs were 89% more likely to develop pneumonia than people who no longer took them. Less potent acid reducers such as Pepcid and Tagamet also raised the risk of pneumonia, by 63%. Doctors say such drugs are so good at knocking out the stomach's germ-killing acids that they make patients--especially the elderly and people with chronic lung illness--more vulnerable to the bugs that cause pneumonia. --By Sora Song