Posted on 12/06/2021 8:38:37 AM PST by Red Badger
Usage of the medication sildenafil – better known to most as the brand-name drug Viagra – is associated with dramatically reduced incidence of Alzheimer's disease, new research suggests.
According to a study led by researchers at the Cleveland Clinic, taking sildenafil is tied to a nearly 70 percent lower risk of developing Alzheimer's compared to non-users.
That's based on an analysis of health insurance claim data from over 7.2 million people, in which records showed that claimants who took the medication were much less likely to develop Alzheimer's over the next six years of follow up, compared to matched control patients who didn't use sildenafil.
It's important to note that observed associations like this – even on a huge scale – are not the same as proof of a causative effect. For example, it's possible that the people in the cohort who took sildenafil might have something else to thank for their improved chances of not developing Alzheimer's.
Nonetheless, the researchers say the correlation shown here – in addition to other indicators in the study – is enough to identify sildenafil as a promising candidate drug for Alzheimer's disease, the viability of which can be explored in future randomized clinical trials designed to test whether causality does indeed exist.
"Notably, we found that sildenafil use reduced the likelihood of Alzheimer's in individuals with coronary artery disease, hypertension, and type 2 diabetes, all of which are comorbidities significantly associated with risk of the disease, as well as in those without," explains computational biologist and senior author of the study, Feixiong Cheng from the Cleveland Clinic.
It's not the first time sildenafil use has been linked with better health outcomes, with the drug previously showing promise in a range of different scientific contexts, including cancer and malaria research among others.
Here, Cheng's team began by building over a dozen endophenotype modules, using computational techniques to map genetic factors that could hypothetically govern the manifestation of Alzheimer's disease.
With 13 of these modules in hand, the researchers then looked at what kinds of FDA-approved drugs might hypothetically help against the identified phenotypes.
Out of over 1,600 such medications already approved by the FDA, sildenafil turned out to be one of the most promising candidates.
That might sound baffling – given the drug is so far used in the main only for treating erectile dysfunction and pulmonary hypertension – in the research community, there were already signs the sildenafil compound might have other kinds of health benefits, given its interactions with the amyloid and tau proteins implicated in Alzheimer's pathology.
"Recent studies show that the interplay between amyloid and tau is a greater contributor to Alzheimer's than either by itself," Cheng says.
"We hypothesized that drugs targeting the molecular network intersection of amyloid and tau endophenotypes should have the greatest potential for success… Sildenafil, which has been shown to significantly improve cognition and memory in preclinical models, presented as the best drug candidate."
The hypothesis appears to be borne out by the health insurance data, with the team finding sildenafil users had a 69 percent reduced risk of Alzheimer's disease compared to non-users – a reduction that was notably stronger than other kinds of medications also investigated in the study, including losartan, metformin, diltiazem, and glimepiride.
Of course, the researchers emphasize that none of this establishes causality, but on that front there may be other promising leads.
In separate experiments studying human brain cells in vitro to explore how sildenafil might confer protection against Alzheimer's cognitive decline, the researchers observed that neurons treated with the drug showed elevated growth and reduced tau accumulation.
It's early days, but those effects could well have something to do with the reduced chances of developing Alzheimer's in the insurance cohort. To that end, it's important to follow these leads further, the team says.
"We are now planning a mechanistic trial and a phase II randomized clinical trial to test causality and confirm sildenafil's clinical benefits for Alzheimer's patients," Cheng says.
"We also foresee our approach being applied to other neurodegenerative diseases, including Parkinson's disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, to accelerate the drug discovery process."
The findings are reported in Nature Aging.
same wonderful corporation that brought us these experimental mRNA covid shots
Or, it could be that those who took Viagra had a love life, and those who didn’t, didn’t have a love life.
bump for reference.
Most drugs work because they improve the circulation — including aspirin, which thins the blood.
High blood pressure medications work by dilating the blood vessels — allowing more blood to flow through while decreasing the work the heart has to do.
Many medications were formulated to treat high blood pressure, and the manner in which they do, produces unanticipated side effects. Viagra and Cialis increases the body’s production of nitric oxide — which dilates the capillaries (tiniest blood vessels) — and predictably, the capillaries throughout the body, and not just to one specific organ — as the specialists like to believe.
Therefore, it is likely to improve the general health of the body — including the erectile dysfunction, benign prostate enlargement, arthritis in the hands and feet, brain functioning, etc.
Of course the narrow specialists like the Faucis of the world still believe that everything is unrelated to everything else — and so drugs that improve the health generally in some unfunded way, can have no effect on improvements which the fund grantor did not pay for.
So it is quite plausible that increasing nitric oxide lowers the incidence of dementias and dysfunctions by improving the overall functioning and immunity of the body — without first generating specific studies to prove their effectiveness and profitability for individuals and organizations that underwrite those specific studies. But we have all of life to observe the relationship of one thing to every other. That is true science — and not just the control of bureaucratic hierarchies aggrandizing their own place, profitability and egos in the greater scheme of things.
I think viagra was originally used for diabetics. Then they found out it worked for ED. Now it works for alzheimers.
The drug in viagra was initially a hair loss remedy.
Guys would massage it onto their scalp, get wood, rub one off then grow hair on their palms. Or is that an urban legend?
Well, Viagra does help the little head do the thinking for the big head....
lmao
I was wrong:
This is DUH!-week.
I am going to need some hard evidence to judge the voracity of this finding.
I’m far from an expert on it but I think that supplementing with a nitric oxide precursor (L-Arginine) works better unless you are mainly interested in GI tract activity (such as possibly repairing NSAID damage).
Some drugs increase circulation in parts of the vascular system and decrease it in other parts so you have to be careful. I had some personal experience with that which I won’t go into but I assure you it’s true.
Viagra is a prophylatic!
Their market penetration is omparatively small, I've heard.
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