Generic brand of Viagra Sildenafil linked to reduced risk of Alzheimer’s disease

Viagra, the best-known drug to treat erectile dysfunction, has been linked to a reduced risk of Alzheimer’s disease. Serious.

According to a new study published Monday in the journal Aging nature, sildenafil – the generic name for Viagra – was associated with a 69% reduction in the incidence of Alzheimer’s disease in a large-scale analysis of more than 7 million patients.

It should be noted upfront that this study did not establish a causal link between sildenafil and a reduced risk of Alzheimer’s disease; it simply suggests that there is an important relationship that needs to be discovered through actual clinical trials. Still, the findings are a pleasant surprise and the latest in a string of recent studies highlighting the potential of using old medicines to treat incurable diseases.

“Before this study, we didn’t expect to identify sildenafil” as a drug candidate for treatment, said Feixiong Cheng, a researcher at the Cleveland Clinic and lead author of the new study. Alzheimer.

Alzheimer’s disease is expected to affect more than 13.8 million Americans by 2050, which means it’s important to begin identifying new cost-effective therapies that can improve lives. of the patient or even stop the disease from progressing in the first place.

An untapped source of new treatments could be existing drugs that are inexpensive to manufacture and have known tolerable side effects. Cheng and his colleagues began their research as a screener for more than 1,600 FDA-approved drugs used to treat other diseases and conditions. They focused their search on drugs that target the accumulation of beta proteins amyloid and tau – a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease that leads to neurodegenerative changes.

This test has pinpointed several drugs that are able to reverse this protein buildup, and sildenafil (which, in addition to treating erectile dysfunction, is also sometimes prescribed to treat high blood pressure) has emerged. is the best candidate. Cheng and his colleagues found several animal studies showing that sildenafil could reduce Alzheimer’s disease, and they also conducted laboratory tests on human brain cells to demonstrate anti-inflammatory effects. drug’s tau.

In the final part of the study, the authors looked through a massive database of more than 7 million Alzheimer’s patients to see if those who took sildenafil past and present experienced better disease outcomes. not yet. They found that sildenafil users were 69 percent less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease than those who didn’t use it for six years. Sildenafil is also associated with a lower incidence of Alzheimer’s disease than drugs such as losartan and metformin that have been studied in Alzheimer’s disease clinical trials.

The tool is recommended, but for obvious reasons, most men are using sildenafil. Controlled trials looking at the effects of genders are needed before we can start renaming the little blue pills as a cure for Alzheimer’s.

Fortunately, Cheng has scheduled a phase II trial to test the clinical benefits of sildenafil in patients with early-stage Alzheimer’s. (A Phase I trial may be omitted because the drug’s safety is well known.)

Cheng added that it is unlikely we will see sildenafil prescribed separately. “Since Alzheimer’s is a complex disease with multiple factors, multi-targeted drugs or combination therapies that target multiple disease pathways may provide better clinical benefit,” he said. More likely than not, we will see sildenafil used in combination with other treatments.