Word: mylanta
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Dates: during 1995-1995
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Relief from heartburn has been provided for more than a century by antacids that include such familiar brands as Tums, Rolaids, Maalox and Mylanta, products that annually rack up sales approaching $1 billion in the U.S. alone. These antacids, which bring relief within minutes, work by neutralizing the stomach acid that causes heartburn. But because the stomach continues to produce acid, they remain effective for only a few hours...
...aware that their new heartburn drugs are bound to cannibalize their traditional antacid products. In touting Tagamet HB, for example, SmithKline has to avoid invidious comparisons with Tums, its antacid moneymaker, while J&J/Merck must tiptoe around any comparisons between Pepcid AC and its antacid, the much advertised Mylanta. Meanwhile, Switzerland's Ciba-Geigy has other worries. Though it has no acid blocker available that could bite into sales of Maalox, its bread-and-butter antacid, its competitors' new drugs almost certainly will...
...blockers still have fewer side effects than antacids. (Tagamet may interfere with the body's ability to metabolize certain drugs, but the incidence, say researchers, is not significant.) Meanwhile, calcium-based antacids like Tums and Rolaids can occasionally contribute to kidney stones, and aluminum- and magnesium-based ones like Mylanta and Maalox can sometimes be dangerous for people with kidney problems. Says clinician Dr. Thomas Gage, a member of the A.G.A.'s patient-care committee: "The risk-benefit profile for H2 blockers is excellent, and they represent an advance over what was previously available...
Unlike Tums, Mylanta and other popular antacids, these so-called H2 antagonists actually stop the stomach from churning out corrosive juices rather than just neutralizing them after they have formed. They cannot provide immediate relief, but their effects tend to be long-lasting--which has some critics of the OTC trend worried. They fear that prolonged, unsupervised use of H2 antagonists could mask such serious problems as gastric reflux, in which stomach acids back up into the esophagus and eat away at its inner lining...