Ranitidine Kills Neonates

Specifically, 24 to 32-week premature neonates, but it’s still an interesting demonstration of the unanticipated dangers of reducing the body’s nonimmune defense mechanisms.

This is a non-randomized, controlled, prospective, observational study from Italy that simply looked at how many premature neonates in their NICU received ranitidine treatment for acid suppression.  The secondary endpoints of the study were any observed associations between ranitidine use/non-use and NEC, mortality, sepsis, length of hospitalization, etc.  This is still non-randomized observational data, so the associations may be affected by other unknown confounders – but mortality in the non-ranitidine group was 1.6% and the mortality in the ranitidine group was 9.8%.  This difference is probably all attributable to infection, considering 25.3% of the ranitidine group developed sepsis compared to 8.7% in the non-ranitidine group.

An impressive difference, even in a non-randomized cohort.  Not a lot of obviously significant differences between groups.  We’ve seen similar, smaller increases in infection in ICU adults receiving acid-suppression medication – I wonder if these effects extend to young infants on ranitidine as well?

“Ranitidine is Associated With Infections, Necrotizing Enterocolitis, and Fatal Outcome in Newborns”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22157140