Association of Vitamin B12 deficiency with long-term PPIs use: A cohort study

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.