According to a study, men who use erectile dysfunction medications like Viagra may lower their chance of developing Alzheimer’s disease. The medication-taking group was 18% less likely to develop the dementia-causing disease in a study involving almost 260,000 males.To demonstrate that the medications are having the desired impact, however, more research is required.
There is great hope that two novel medications for Alzheimer’s disease can reduce the illness’s progression in its early stages. They may alter the course of treatment for Alzheimer’s by targeting beta amyloid, a protein that accumulates in the brains of those who have the disease.
Prescription Documentation- Viagra, Alzheimer’s Disease,
Originally, angina and high blood pressure were the intended uses of medications like Viagra. They function by acting on a messenger that is connected to memory and is also involved in cell signaling. They have been shown to influence brain cell activity and may have some protective effects on the brain based on studies conducted on animals.
Researchers from University College London compared the prescription histories of thousands of men with erectile dysfunction who received the medications to those who did not in a recent study published in Neurology.
However, researchers are still searching for medications that are currently on the market that can stop or postpone the disease’s initial development. In the next five years, they discovered 9.7 cases of Alzheimer’s Disease in the group not taking the medication and 8.1 cases per 10,000 person years in the group that was provided the medication.
The men with the highest number of erectile dysfunction prescriptions had the lowest risk of Alzheimer’s disease, indicating that consistent erectile dysfunction medication use may have a higher protective effect against the condition. The study, according to the researchers, may open up new research directions but does not prove that the medications themselves were lowering people’s risk of Alzheimer’s.
Lead author Dr Ruth Brauer said: “More research is needed to confirm these findings, learn more about the potential benefits and mechanisms of these drugs and look into the optimal dosage.”
The researchers also want to run a trial in women as well as men, to see if the drug has any impact.
There are many factors which could be causing the disease. The study adjusted its findings for some of them, including age, underlying health conditions, other medicines taken and whether the participant was a smoker.
“This study does not conclusively prove that erectile dysfunction drugs reduce Alzheimer’s risk but provide good evidence that this type of drug is worth further study in future,” said Prof Tara Spires-Jones, from the University of Edinburgh, and president of the British Neuroscience Association.
Dr Francesco Tamagnini, neurophysiologist at the University of Reading, said it was “a great study”, but more hard evidence on how the drug affected the brain was needed.
“It could be that it exerts a therapeutic effect directly affecting neurons (if the drug is able to cross the blood brain barrier) and/or by increasing blood flow, but both these hypotheses need to be tested,” he said.