First it was toilet paper. Then it was meat.
Now, those are antacids.
Or people who are over-the-counter at online or in stores are finding that they cannot easily buy antacid drugs such as Toms, Pepsid and its general version, Femotidine in parts of the country. A few weeks ago, Vegmans Food Markets took the step of limiting shoppers to two packets of fam motaidin products per trip.
During an epidemic that saw explosions of hoarding, this could be the most unexpected.
Americans are under stress. They are concerned about the growing number of coronavirus cases. They worry about their jobs. Remote learning is a nightmare, and shopping for groceries is not a walk in the park. Not to mention the election. And now, here comes the holidays. The result is that some people are dealing with “epidemic,” acid-churning episodes that are on the rise. Demand for over-the-counter and prescription antacids.
And antacids are also popular with people who still have indigestion or heartburn. Preliminary studies suggest that femotidine may reduce the symptoms of coronavirus after people began to stock up on them. The second shopping spree hit this fall when President Trump was treated for coronavirus and White House officials said he was on femotidine with zinc and vitamin D.
For the need for relief, the scarcity is overwhelming.
While Gainfield, Mass. Maia Kallah, a recent elementary-education graduate who teaches families in and remote tutoring in, tried to place a normal order of PepsiD in her Stop Online Stop and Shop Cart in early September, saying she was out of stock.
“I thought, well, I’ll order through Amazon,” Ms. Kalhan, who has an autoimmune disorder and has been taking medication to treat her heartburn since she was 17, said Kalhan. “It was the worst. One of the heartburn medications was at three times the normal price. I was injured after taking Tums for two weeks.”
Physicians said that when quarantine was lifted this spring, they began to report more patients with symptoms of heartburn and acid reflux.
“I think part of it is that it’s the stress of all the things in the world,” about 25 miles northwest of Boston, Acton, Mass. Dr. Lure Ren Blach, a gastroenterologist in, said he has seen a 25 percent increase in patients. Reporting heartburn and similar symptoms.
But he also said the coronavirus, which has disrupted people’s normal lives and forced many to work from home, has caused many “dietary uncertainties” that exacerbate these symptoms.
“We’re more steep than alcohol or sweets or our comfortable foods,” Dr. Bleach said. “And then there’s the lack of activity or exercise. Weight gain certainly contributes to heartburn and acid reflux. “
Another culprit appeared in early November.
“There were a lot of us around the election suffering from upset stomachs, heartburn and indigestion,” he said.
Dr. Atul Maini, medical director of St. Joseph’s Health’s Heartburn Center in Syracuse, NY, said that while there was no increase in patients at the specialty center, he saw a large difference in patients receiving treatment with coronavirus. Lifted quarantine.
“Patients who came in with heartburn symptoms were now very restless and depressed,” he said. “Something else had changed.”
Over-the-counter pharmaceutical companies are trying to meet demand.
“We know there may be pockets of supply disruption,” a spokesman for GlaxoSmithKline, which manufactures Tums, said in an email.
For some antacids, however, the increased demand spike can be linked to various preliminary studies, suggesting femotidine, the main ingredient of pepsid, may reduce coronavirus symptoms.
In the spring, some patients with Covid-19 at Northwell Health in the New York City area began receiving intravenous femotidine as part of a clinical trial following reports of its use in China. The trial was suspended in May due to declining patient rates, and no conclusions were drawn. An observational study released this fall by Hartford Hospital in Connecticut indicated that it, too, showed positive results in coronavirus patients who were given femotidine.
Of the approximately 900 Hartford hospital patients treated for coronavirus in the spring, 83 were given femotidine at some point during hospitalization. The hospital said in its research report that those who received femotidine had a lower mortality rate at the hospital and needed less help breathing through a ventilator.
Still, the medical community is wary of preliminary results. In late June, the American Society of Infectious Diseases recommended the use of femotidine except in the context of clinical trials due to incomplete data.
In April, the Food and Drug Administration asked companies to stop selling all forms of the heartburn drug Zantek, and demand for femotidine and pepsid rose sharply before preliminary research reports were released, and consumers recommended that over-the-counter consumers take the version, Stop doing what is called ranitidine. Low levels of the cancer-causing chemical were detected in the drug samples.
As consumers and physicians migrated from Zentac to the common femotidine and pepsid, drug makers struggled to maintain it. Some manufacturers have reported drug shortages to the FDA this year.
PepsiCo producers Johnson & Johnson said that although most large retailers have sufficient supplies to meet customer demand, “we understand that supply may be temporary in some stores and in-line stores,” a spokesman for Johnson & Johnson said in an email. . “We are taking all possible steps to ensure the availability of the product in a timely and quality manner.” In July, company officials said sales of over-the-counter drugs in the United States rose 30 percent in the second quarter, driven by strong demand for adult Tylenol, Pepsid and other products.
For those who are on generic versions of pepsid or femotidine, there has been a struggle over the last few months.
“I got a bottle in February, but haven’t found one since,” said McKenzie Doyle, a 21-year-old student at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, who takes prescription-strength pepsids to treat an immune disorder. It was also difficult to find more over-the-counter pepsids this spring, he said. When she visited her parents in Alabama during the spring break, PepsiDo was sold in the four stores she visited.
“It was impossible to find a pepsid when the first phase of panic purchase occurred,” said Mrs Doyle, who eventually discovered some common femotidine in Vagrains and took a double dose to get her prescription-level strength.
Ms. Dole admitted that she has mixed feelings about early studies around femotidine and coronavirus. While she endorses the research, she wonders if the names of the drugs used could have been stopped if not more known.
And then there are just-in-case hoarders.
“It makes me a little angry,” Ms. Doyle said. “There are a lot of people who have my immune system and who are worse than me and need drugs to stay alive. People buy and store it in cabinets in the bathroom and never open the bottle, which makes me tense. “
