Monday, June 27, 2005

Audience for local doc's study stunning

The whole world seems to be interested in how soft drinks, obesity and sleeping pills are related to heartburn.

ANNE T. DENOGEAN

Tucson Citizen

Soda, tranquilizers and heartburn - apparently it's an irresistible mix for the media.

When the medical journal Chest in May published a local doctor's study linking nighttime heartburn with soft drink and sleeping pill consumption, he expected some public interest. But Dr. Ronnie Fass has been stunned by the onslaught of attention.

From The New York Times to the network morning shows, from middle America to the Middle East, 2,400 media outlets have run a story on the study, reaching a potential audience of 360 million people.

Many outlets did their own stories. Others picked it up from wire services. The Tucson Citizen covered it May 12.

And requests for interviews are still coming in, said Fass, a staff gastroenterologist at the Southern Arizona VA Health Care System and a University of Arizona associate professor of medicine.

Magazines that ran the story are now asking him to respond to questions from readers about it, making him feel a bit like "Dear Abby," Fass said.

Fass said staff at Chest, which tracks who picks up stories, told him this is one of the biggest studies it has ever had in the journal in terms of exposure.

Fass was the lead investigator in the survey of 15,314 people from across the United States, the first to examine how common nighttime heartburn is among the general public. As it turns out, a quarter of American adults suffer heartburn that causes them to lose sleep.

The leading suspects in causing nighttime heartburn are carbonated soft drinks, excess body weight and benzodiazepines, a class of tranquilizers that includes Valium and Xanax, the study found. That's probably what's driving the interest in the study, Fass said.

"Everybody likes to drink soda, and a lot of people use sleeping pills," he said.

Fass has published some 250 articles, chapters and books, but nothing else has ever drawn this kind of attention. He said it gives him a "great sense of accomplishment" that the information got out to such a huge audience.

It's also kind of cool to become a bit of a celebrity.

"It keeps going, and I truly have had a lot of fun with this," Fass said.