Association of Vitamin B12 deficiency with long-term PPIs use: A cohort study
Hassan Mumtaz, Bushra Ghafoor, Hina Saghir, Mariam Tariq, Kashmala Dahar, Syed Hasan Ali, Syeda Tahira Waheed, Abdul Ahad Syed
Abstract
Proton Pump inhibitors are widely used among the majority of the world's population as acid-suppressing medications. Proton Pump Inhibitors have been reported to cause intestinal damage and adverse gut microbiota changes affecting several mechanisms, including malabsorption, etc. In order to gain a deeper understanding, we conducted a cohort analysis to assess the prevalence & association of Vitamin B12 deficiency in patients on long-term use of PPIs. This single-center cohort study was conducted at the Department of Internal Medicine, KRL hospital in Islamabad, Pakistan from May 2021 to May 2022. Rao soft calculator with a 95% confidence interval and 5% error margin was used to find the estimated sample size. Vitamin B12 levels were analyzed using the Cobas e411 analyzer. Chi-square test, odds ratio, and t-tests were used for analysis. Among the 1225 participants, more than half of the men (55.10%) had low levels of vitamin B12. Vit B12 levels were observed to be significantly lower in Omeprazole patients than in Pantoprazole patients. A vitamin B12 deficiency is 0.5 times more likely in patients taking PPIs. There is a substantial difference between the early and final levels of B12 indicated by the t-test. According to our findings, long-term usage of PPIs is linked to an increased risk of vitamin B12 insufficiency specifically in men falling under the ages of 18 and 40.