The Link Between GERD Medication and Osteoporosis

GERD stands for Gastro Esophageal Reflux Disease. Four different types of medications are used to treat patients with GERD. Three of those medications, antacids, H2 receptor inhibitors and promobility agents, have not been linked to osteoporosis. A fourth type of GERD medication, the proton pump inhibitor, has been linked to the symptoms found in patients with osteoporosis.

What are those symptoms? When a patient has osteoporosis, his or her bones lack a sufficient number of osteoblasts and osteocytes. Those are the two types of bone-forming cells in the body. Bones that have functioning osteoblasts and osteocytes can assume their natural density. In the absence of functioning osteoblasts and osteocytes, the bone becomes thin and brittle.

In order to function properly, the osteoblasts and the osteocytes require access to bone-building minerals. Most importantly, they need a way to obtain calcium. Without calcium, the bone-forming cells can not produce dense and healthy bone tissue.

Calcium does not naturally travel into the cell from the bloodstream. Calcium needs to be pumped into the osteoblasts and osteocytes. The body has a special enzyme system that furnishes the pump with the energy that it needs. Without that energy, the body can not pump calcium into the bone-forming cells.

The bone tissue is not the only place in the body where a chemical must be pumped into or out or a particular group of cells. Cells in the lining of the stomach need to pump acid into the stomach. Those cells get energy from the same enzyme system as the system found in the bone-forming cells. That system is called a proton pump.

When a physician prescribes a proton inhibitor to treat GERD, then the patient taking that inhibitor blocks all of the proton pumps in the body. The cells lining the stomach no longer pump acid into the stomach. At the same time, the bone forming cells in the bone tissue lack the ability to obtain calcium.