Viagra And Similar Drugs Might Help Keep Alzheimer's At Bay
Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
One of the world's most famous drug classes may have another trick up its sleeve. In a new study, scientists in the UK have found that erectile dysfunction drugs like sildenafil (more widely known as Viagra) are linked to a lowered risk of Alzheimer's disease, the most common form of dementia. The findings don't prove a cause-and-effect connection, the team says, but do merit clinical trials that could confirm a genuine benefit.
Sildenafil and similar drugs are called phosphodiesterase type 5 inhibitors, or PDE5Is. By inhibiting PDE5, these drugs can open up blood vessels in certain parts of the body, particularly the penis. That's why, although sildenafil was originally developed to treat hypertension and chest pain, it was found to be especially effective at alleviating erectile dysfunction. And thus the little blue pill was born.
While these drugs are synonymous with ED, they are taken for other indications as well. Several are approved to treat pulmonary hypertension, or high blood pressure in the arteries of the lung. And scientists have been studying them for other medical uses, in both humans and animals.
The most intriguing possibility for these drugs might be in their potential against Alzheimer's, though. In 2021, a NIH-funded study found evidence in the lab and from the real world that sildenafil could noticeably prevent or delay the onset of Alzheimer's in older people-perhaps reducing people's relative risk by as much as 69% compared to not taking the drug, based on insurance claims data. However, less than a year later, an October 2022 study from a separate team (also NIH-funded) that looked at Medicare data failed to find any link between reduced Alzheimer's risk and sildenafil.
The conflicting findings were enough to draw the attention of Ruth Brauer, an epidemiologist at the University of College London, and her team. So they decided to investigate for themselves, using medical record data collected through the UK's National Health Service-data that gave them an advantage compared to past studies, according to Brauer.
UK healthcare data can often be followed up for a very long time, and longer than U.S. insurance data. That's because most of our data are collected by general practitioners or primary care physicians, and they often have patients under their care for decades," she explained. The second thing that is unique about UK healthcare data is that we have a lot of lifestyle variables in our data set, which can affect the risk of Alzheimer's disease. So things like smoking or BMI, but also information on socioeconomic status."
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