Evidence Hub

A Vanished Association Between Proton Pump Inhibitors and Clostridioides Difficile Infection After Minimizing Bias

Wu B, He Z, Xu T

Journal of clinical medicine, 2025

4 citations

Abstract

Background: The gut microbiome might be affected by proton-pump inhibitors (PPIs), increasing the risk of Clostridioides difficile infection (CDI); however, the association between PPIs and Clostridioides difficile infection (CDI) remains controversial. Aim: The aim of this study is to reevaluate the association between PPIs and CDI based on pharmacovigilance data, taking competition bias into account. Methods: PPI-related CDI adverse event reports, based on the Food and Drug Administration adverse event reporting system database from 2004 to 2023, were analyzed. Included PPI cases were stratified into CDI and non-CDI groups. Disproportionality analysis was performed using the reporting odds ratio (ROR) and information component (IC). The effect of competition bias on signal detection was quantitatively investigated. Age-stratified analyses were conducted to assess residual confounding. Results: A total of 238,470 PPI reports were included, with 1268 cases in the CDI group and 237,202 cases in the non-CDI group. Initial analysis revealed a significant PPI-CDI association (ROR = 2.36, 95% confidence interval (95%CI) 2.19 to 2.53; IC = 1.21, 95%CI 0.97 to 1.45), with CDI signals detected for five PPI agents, including pantoprazole, omeprazole, lansoprazole, rabeprazole, and dexlansoprazole. After excluding competition from antibacterial drugs, CDI signal strength decreased substantially (ROR = 1.47, 95%CI 1.34 to 1.62; IC = 0.55, 95%CI 0.23 to 0.87), retaining a significant…

Read the paper

Related studies

Go deeper in Evidence Hub

Evidence Hub adds a study data sheet (design, sample size, evidence level, key numbers), an AI summary and a chat grounded in the paper's text.

Open this study Sign up free