VIAGRA may help to lower the risk of Alzheimer ...

 

After a decades-long and largely fruitless hunt for drugs to combat Alzheimer’s disease, an unlikely candidate has raised its head: the erectile dysfunction pill Viagra.

Researchers found that men who were prescribed Viagra and similar medications were 18% less likely to develop the most common form of dementia years later than those who went without the drugs.

The effect was strongest in men with the most prescriptions, with scientists finding a 44% lower risk of Alzheimer’s in those who received 21 to 50 prescriptions of the erectile dysfunction pills over the course of their study.

While the findings are striking, the observational study cannot determine whether Viagra and similar pills protect against Alzheimer’s or whether men who are already less prone to the condition are simply more likely to use the tablets.

“We can’t say that the drugs are responsible, but this does give us food for thought on how we move into the future,” said the lead author Dr Ruth Brauer at University College London. “We now need a proper clinical trial to look at the effects of these drugs on Alzheimer’s in women as well as men.”

Brauer and her colleagues analysed medical records for more than 260,000 men who were diagnosed with erectile dysfunction but had no evidence of memory or thinking problems.

Just over half were taking PDE5 inhibitor drugs, including sildenafil (sold as Viagra), avanafil, vardenafil and tadalafil. The men were followed for an average of five years to record any new cases of Alzheimer’s.

An estimated 55 million people live with dementia around the world, most of which is due to Alzheimer’s. New drugs that clear aberrant proteins from the brain have shown promise for slowing down the disease, but the effects of the medicines appear marginal.

Viagra was originally developed to treat angina and high blood pressure, but when Welsh miners who took part in a trial in Merthyr Tydfil remarked on its unexpected night-time side-effects, the drug became a multibillion dollar erectile dysfunction pill.

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