BBC – Men who take drugs for erectile dysfunction, such as Viagra, may reduce their risk of Alzheimer’s disease, a study suggests.
In research on more than 260,000 men, those taking the drugs were 18% less likely to develop the dementia-causing condition.
But more research is needed to prove that the drugs are causing the effect.
Two new Alzheimer’s drugs have shown huge promise at slowing the pace of the disease in its earliest stages.
By attacking [build up] called beta amyloid which builds up in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s, they have the potential to change the way the disease is treated.
But scientists are also continuing to look for existing drugs that could prevent or delay it developing in the first place.
Drugs like Viagra were originally designed to treat high blood pressure and angina. They work by acting on a cell-signaling messenger that may also be linked to memory.
They are also known to affect brain cell activity, and research in animals suggests they have some protective effect on the brain.
In the new study in Neurology, researchers from University College London looked at prescription records of thousands of men with erectile dysfunction, comparing those who had been given the drugs with those who hadn’t.
Over the following five years, they found 8.1 cases of Alzheimer’s per 10,000 person years in the group prescribed the drugs, and 9.7 cases in the group not taking them.
Men who had been issued the most prescriptions for erectile dysfunction drugs were least likely to develop Alzheimer’s, suggesting regular use of the drug could have a greater impact on the disease.
The researchers say their study doesn’t show that the drugs themselves were reducing people’s risk of Alzheimer’s, but could point to a new avenue of research …
