June 11, 2015 | A project by scientists at Stanford University to monitor a large set of electronic health records has uncovered a probable link between extended use of proton pump inhibitors, including Nexium and Prilosec, and an increased risk of heart attack. The study, published in PLOS One, is of a type that should become increasingly common as electronic records are widely adopted in hospitals, offering new opportunities to track drug side effects across very large populations; in this case, the researchers examined records of nearly 3 million patients at Stanford and in the Practice Fusion database. The risk associated with taking proton pump inhibitors, which are commonly used for heartburn, does not appear to be large — the authors estimate it amounts to just over one additional heart attack for every 4,500 patients taking the drugs — but it was not found in heartburn sufferers taking alternative treatments like Pepcid, or going untreated. Washington Post