New research from Austria found that people who use drugs that suppress stomach acid were almost twice as likely to need drugs to control allergy symptoms.

And people over 60 who used these drugs were more than five times as likely to also need an allergy medication, the study reported.

“Many people have gastric [stomach] complaints and many people take anti-acid medicine. The longer the treatment with these medicines, the higher the risk of allergies,” said study senior author Dr. Erika Jensen-Jarolim, a clinical immunologist at the Medical University of Vienna.

How might these two conditions be connected? Jensen-Jarolim said that, normally, the acidic environment in the stomach helps break down food-derived proteins that can cause allergies.