Recent research supports the idea that Viagra might be useful in the fight against Alzheimer’s disease. The evidence obtained in previous studies is indeed contradictory.
At the beginning of March in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease published new study provides more evidence that Viagra (sildenafil), a drug used to treat erectile dysfunction, may help protect against Alzheimer’s disease, reports the news agency Medscape.
The study in question is based on the analysis of real patient data in two databases. The researchers looked for people who had a prescription for sidenafil or its four comparators (bumetanide, furosemide, spironolactone and nifedipine). In the analysis, artificial intelligence was used to integrate the data.
According to the results obtained from the study, people who used Viagra had 30-54 percent less Alzheimer’s disease than those who did not use the drug.
The finding was supported by disease mechanism studies that showed reduced neurotoxic protein levels in brain cells exposed to phosphodiesterase type 5 inhibitors (PDE5i) – which includes sildenafil.
“New treatments for Alzheimer’s disease are desperately needed. Our results lend further weight to the idea that Viagra could be one of them,” the director of the Cleveland Clinic Genome Center, who led the study Feixiong Cheng says in the announcement.
Conflicting results have been obtained in previous studies regarding Viagra’s connection to Alzheimer’s disease.