A stomach-acid blocker alongside probably stopped most new ulcers
Among people on a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug for four weeks or more, a proton pump inhibitor probably reduced new ulcers, at a risk ratio of 0.29 against placebo.
What the study found
Adding a stomach-acid blocker cut new ulcers by about 70%
Among adults and children taking a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug, or NSAID, for four weeks or more, a proton pump inhibitor, or PPI, probably reduced new ulcers, at a risk ratio of 0.29 against placebo. Whether it eased indigestion symptoms was too uncertain to say.
The caveat · Most trials had bias concerns
Most of the included trials were at high risk of bias or raised concerns, and all of them ran for a year or less, so nothing here bears on years of combined use. The result for ulcer complications, as opposed to ulcers found by endoscopy, had an interval crossing no effect, from 0.10 to 1.07. Comparisons against other stomach medicines rest on single small studies. The trials were published between 1996 and 2014.