Viagra Is Linked to Almost 70% Lower Risk of Alzheimer's

https://www.sciencealert.com/giant-study-finds-viagra-is-linked-to-almost-70-lower-risk-of-alzheimer-s

by spekcular • 5 years ago

179 113 5 years ago

This is very interesting. The article points out twice that there is no evidence it's causal, but does proposr some potential causal mechanisms, all told a pretty reasonable summary of the finding.

I'm curious to know if there is any info related to alzheimers and sex drive. The 70% is based on chance developing alzheimers in the next six years, I wonder if there is any relation between a profile who would seek Viagra - I guess that would be people interested in sex, have an available partner, but having trouble - and one who would be less likely to get alzheimers soon.

galaxyLogic• 5 years ago

Having a partner might lower the risk of Alzheimer's because having someone to talk to keeps your mind in a working condition. But also, taking Viagra means you are more likely to have sex and having sex might be the thing brain needs for "exercise".

I find it somewhat hilarious to think that soon the Covid vaccine infomercials might be extended with "To keep you safe also remember to have sex" .

lb1lf• 5 years ago

"To keep you safe also remember to have sex" .

-While maintaining a safe distance, mind.

waterhouse• 5 years ago

Or: Developing Alzheimer's makes you less interested in sex, makes your partner less interested in sex with you (possibly via creating problems with the relationship), and/or otherwise creates obstacles to sex.

wruza• 5 years ago

Viagra et al is not just a boner medicine, and it’s actually a side effect. Low effort link: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/07/070727182359.h... Generic info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sildenafil

raducu4• 5 years ago

I have a funny/sad/gross anecode: my flat neighbor had alzheimer's and I helped his wife for a few years, but really nothing much/special -- just getting him out of bed or off the toilet when he wouldn't budge (I can only imagine what his wife went through).

But very frequently when he was on the toilet he would play with his erm... sword and unsheathe it (Easter Europe, I'm cut, he wasn't) and his wife asked me why he did that?

And I was like.... "erm.... I think that question is overdue by about 40 years.."

yhvh• 5 years ago

That's pretty special.

wsc981• 5 years ago

I'm guessing old people's homes are bound to get a whole lot more interesting!

aaron695• 5 years ago

Viagra might help with altitude sickness, which I'm not sure would be linked to this, but it might help with breaking the idea it's only for erectile dysfunction and cardiovascular problems.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-southkorea-politics-viagr...

thereisnospork• 5 years ago

A future where Viagra is prophylactically prescribed... that'll have some interesting social effects to be sure.

vidarh4• 5 years ago

Viagra/sildenafil no longer requires a prescription in the UK, so I'm now imagining public health advertising campaigns telling older people to remember their Viagra.

perth• 5 years ago

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6036338/

Viagra increases testosterone?

I wonder if this relates to other things that increase late-life testosterone like red meat (unprocessed)?

https://www.alzdiscovery.org/cognitive-vitality/blog/does-ea...

I've always thought about how big of a role testosterone plays in later-life health and I wonder why doctors don't prescribe it to restore testosterone levels to a normal (for a younger person) level to prevent osteoporosis and other hormone-linked diseases. Not saying this conclusion in the article is related to testosterone, but I have to speculate on it.

JamesBarney3• 5 years ago

They do, but they're reluctant because there is evidence it increases risk of stroke and bad cardiovascular outcomes.

And most of the apparent benefits of testosterone look to be more correlational than causational. (except osteoporosis, and sarcopenia)

stefs• 5 years ago

iirc there also might be problems of (slightly) increased cancer risk.

there are some doctors who prescribe test to keep patients test level up later in life, but the increased quality of life might mean a decreased life span and not everyone is willing to take the trade-off.

patients willing to try usually just try a few doctors until they find one who does.

amelius• 5 years ago

More T is not necessarily a good thing as it might mean that the body has more trouble converting it and make it do its job.

jinpa_zangpo• 5 years ago

A generation of steroid using bodybuilders shows that the body has no trouble utilizing even very large amounts of testosterone.

tsol• 5 years ago

Exogenous testosterone inevitably leads to your natural production going down. Same reason it's a bad idea to even dose a small amount of testosterone in order to help gain muscle quick.

JamesBarney3• 5 years ago

Most of the time these correlation studies are bunk. But I'm cautiously optimistic about this one because

1. The effect is huge.

2. Phospodiesterase is heavily expressed in neural and glial cells

3. There are a ton of alzheimers rodent RCTs with positive results.

swader999• 5 years ago

Red light on your nutsack for ten minutes with wavelengths of 660nm and or 850nm a few times a week is just as effective for the getting old, decreasing boner issues.

Another trick is to form a fist and put it between your legs at your knees and squeeze your legs as hard as you can trying to crush your fist. You might feel a slight pop and things should work better after a few seconds of squeezing your fist.

JamesBarney3• 5 years ago

Some expert opinions on the article

https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-study-...

est31• 5 years ago

Quoting the critical parts of those opinions:

Sildenafil is more often prescribed to wealthy people and low socioeconomic status is associated with higher risk of Alzheimer’s.
There are other possible explanations for these findings; for example, we know that brain changes start decades before dementia symptoms and it is possible that these early Alzheimer’s changes reduce sex drive (thus people wouldn’t ask for a prescription for erectile dysfunction). [...] They did try to control for this by looking into patients with pulmonary hypertension, which is sometimes treated with sildenafil. However, this group did not have a statistically significant decreased risk in Alzheimer’s disease.
people who take sildenafil have less serious cardiovascular damage than those who are taking the other drugs to combat hypertension or diabetes. If cardiovascular damage is a key causal factor in developing Alzheimer’s disease, then these people might anyway be at an advantage compared to people who have to take drugs for hypertension, cardiovascular disease or diabetes. The study tried to control for this, but it is not clear if severity of the different conditions controlled for could be taken into account (those with more severe hypertension are presumably more likely to be taking anti-hypertensive medication such as losartan).

Many of the opinions are quite positive though, and praise the high sophistication of the statistical methods.

d--b• 5 years ago

Is it just me or is there a sub text here that says: “maybe it’s not the drug, maybe a good shag every now and then does it, and viagra consumption is a good proxy for knowing that”?

yellow_lead• 5 years ago

Well it does get your heart rate up

ratsforhorses• 5 years ago

So does masturbation.... could it be the exchange of molecules, a touch of human warmth or that feeling of contentment/happiness which is more important?

yosito3• 5 years ago

According to my Garmin watch, sex with my girlfriend only gets my heart rate into the mid 90s, the same as a walk around the block.

The significance of that data is up for interpretation, but I'm skeptical that sex is really a significant cardio activity.

conductr2• 5 years ago

That’s the first thing that came to my mind, immediately followed by “I should tell my wife that it’s her fault if my semen turns to brain plaque” the next time she has a “headache”

smackeyacky• 5 years ago

Amazing! How are you posting from the 1950s?

quitit• 5 years ago

Correlate it against the female partner and check for the same.

InsomniacL2• 5 years ago

"no honestly babe, a scientist told me"

Scoundreller• 5 years ago

Would be interesting to see what the effect with tadalafil is. Sildenafil is rather short acting while tadalafil is much longer acting. Tadalafil is also used in smaller but daily doses as a treatment for benign prostrate hyperplasia, so there should be more data on longer durations of use and effect.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30901259/

james_burden• 5 years ago

I've been taking 5mg tadalafil/day for years. Super common in longevity/bbuilder circles. Lots of positive effects beyond dong gains.

wellthisisgreat• 5 years ago

Interesting. What kind of positive effects?

Also doesn’t tadalafil act for 36 or something like that hours?

HugoDaniel• 5 years ago

69% is too sexual for the eyes of puritan Americans.

ralusek• 5 years ago

Without reading the article, causality check.

Is it possible that usage of viagra indicates an interest in/ability to participate in sexual activity which also indicates a level of health and mental acuity that would be less common among those with Alzheimer's?

dzonga• 5 years ago

crazy how a medicine went from treating heart disease to ed now to treating alzheimer's. wish more drugs were like this these days, but most modern drugs hardly work

david-gpu• 5 years ago

Presumably the only old drugs still in use are the ones that were particularly effective. Old but ineffective drugs will over time be naturally replaced and forgotten.

It's the same sort of reasoning why ageless musical hits are still enjoyed today. The musical hits that aged poorly have been forgotten over time.

It's not that old stuff was better, it's that modern stuff hasn't had enough time for the crap to be forgotten.

amluto• 5 years ago

cough phenylephrine. Old, widely used, and most studies suggest that it’s essentially completely useless for its intended purpose.

tedk-42• 5 years ago

Finally a reason to take Viagra without the taboo.

baash05• 5 years ago

I find this hard to believe

andruby• 5 years ago

pun intended?

oliwarner2• 5 years ago

Correlation not [necessarily] causation!

Lots of people suggesting having sex might be a prophylactic but also consider that a lower "sex drive" might also be a factor here.

We don't know because we're looking at insurance claim data. You only see links. And only in people with insurance! You have to go much further to show causation.

pas• 5 years ago

do people who use viagra have a lower sex drive or simply erectile disfunction? after all they go and buy viagra and then do have sex. it's not like they pop viagra to have the urge to have sex, right?

Cederfjard• 5 years ago

Correct, it helps with blood flow, not libido. Although of course there could be a psychological component to it.

altdataseller• 5 years ago

Some even have too high of a sex drive and as a result it slowly makes them less sensitive to normal intercourse.

Terry_Roll2• 5 years ago

When is erectile disfunction the result of too much low level body wide disease aka aging, and the histamines are being used by the white blood cells to move through tissue OR not enough histidine in your diet, one of the quickest amino acids into your muscles (it goes straight through the portal shunt) that happens to be a precursor for histamine, and 60mg of histamine will give you a spontaneous erection! Ergo take copious amounts of histidine and get spontaneous erections that you cant control, as if you were going through puberty.

kevincox• 5 years ago

No, but people with a lower sex drive are probably taking less Viagra. The main users of Viagra are likely those with both a sex drive and ED.

hungryforcodes2• 5 years ago

It definitely has nothing to do with low sex drive. Isn't everyone using it now?

oliwarner2• 5 years ago

But why? My point is rather that if you don't want sex, you're not going to co-pay for a drug that helps you maintain an erection you've no interest in.

If you do think everyone is popping these, I'd suggest this is maybe a side effect of years of being exposed to too much spam and way too much under-regulated pharmaceutical advertising. They're not without unwanted side effects, and again, don't overcome a disinterest in sex.

AltruisticGapHN• 5 years ago

My hunch is it has to do with the increased bloodflow to the brain -- and not really about sexual function.

neoncontrails2• 5 years ago

Layperson, admittedly, but it wouldn't shock me that a smooth muscle vasodilator affects cognition. It's good to be skeptical of those claims, but I don't think Occam's Razor cleaves so closely to the alternative explanations.

phantom_oracle• 5 years ago

Every few days, articles like these keep cropping up with click-bait headlines about preventing all types of diseases in old age. The headlines almost always never match up to the content or even the reality of trying to treat or prevent these many diseases.

Another reality is that death, old age(and sickness with it) strikes such fear into people's hearts that they are willing to walk around with perpetual erections to prevent Alzheimer's disease(and the absurdity of my comment is linked to the absurdity of the click-bait title)

neoncontrails2• 5 years ago

It's a smooth muscle vasodilator. Of course it will increase the blood flow of capillaries in the brain, the question is whether that's a good thing. It's plausible that it has some cognitive benefits — but also, entirely plausible that it might lead to oxidative damage. Without more research, it's impossible to say. Amid so many pseudoscientific headlines it's easy to be cynical, but this seems actually like a good research question to be asking.

cblconfederate• 5 years ago

Exciting news but that 69% does sound a bit suspicious ("almost 70%" haha)! The link here between vasodilation and neurodegeneration isn't obvious though and it s going to take a lot of searching, but it is an interesting research direction

threevox• 5 years ago

I don't know if 69% seems suspicious as much as it seems...nice

InsomniacL2• 5 years ago

I love how a finding in science usually means there are now twice as many questions!

johmue• 5 years ago

It's the third option: I guess we all know it's not the viagra, but I would suggest it's also not the sex but rather what is associated with a lifestyle that includes the potential for sex: a lifestyle with connection, a partner and possibly friends. A bigger social group is pretty tightly related to better health outcomes

agumonkey2• 5 years ago

The neurological effect of physical intimacy are probably second to none.. surely it triggers a massive positive side effect on your neurons everytime it happens.

vidarh4• 5 years ago

We don't know any such things. Viagra has effects that could provide a plausible mechanism for a direct causal link. The article in particular points out that it directly interacts with amyloid and tau proteins, that are frequently implicated in Alzheimer's, and that they've explored it's effect on tau in vitro.

That of course is not proof of a causal link, but it's enough to justify follow up research.

q1w22• 5 years ago

Viagra use indicates that the person has a partner(s) at an advanced age. This alone implies MANY lifestyle changes.

What would be interesting would be a comparison again Cialis (the competitor to Viagra).

raducu4• 5 years ago

That could be very easy to prove right or wrong: if it's the sex, then the wives of men taking viagra should be less likely to develop alzheimer's themselves.

rp1• 5 years ago

Or look at men who have a similar amount of sex without taking viagra.

jjtheblunt• 5 years ago

Misleading title:

"Notably, we found that sildenafil use reduced the likelihood of Alzheimer's in individuals with coronary artery disease, hypertension, and type 2 diabetes,..."

lobocinza• 5 years ago

Reading that I think of general improvement on oxygen levels as a side effect which would be a link to Alzheimer.

narrator• 5 years ago

Seems to be the conventional wisdom on this thread that any counterintuitive medical conclusion should be ignored and ascribed to psychosomatic factors, the placebo effect, or we're just testing for it more.

throwaway67325• 5 years ago

Alzheimer's research has taken a surprising erection.

phekunde• 5 years ago

My hypothesis is that this might be indirectly related to the drug. Because sex increases blood circulation to the whole body, including the brain, this circulation helps the brain cells. Taking Viagra regularly for sexual pleasure has this positive side-effect of regular blood flow to the brain, thus reducing the chances of damage to the cells.

q1w22• 5 years ago

There are many correlative factors associated with taking viagra. The fact that older people that take viagra have a partner introduces a myriad of lifestyle differences. Being sexual active is another myriad of differences.

Of all the studies I've seen recently, this one scream Correlation != Causation.

johnvaluk• 5 years ago

Men who don't suffer from Alzheimer's disease are far more likely to get their Viagra prescriptions refilled.

BugsHack• 5 years ago

And a glass of wine everyday is good for your health, and cigarettes make you relaxed and thin, and pot smoking is not addictive, and, and, and...

hermitsings• 5 years ago

Any side effects? Lmao

dukeofdoom• 5 years ago

It's not approved for women, is there something harmful to them in it?

Markoff• 5 years ago

As others said it's most likely different lifestyle and having sex than the viagra itself.

If they wanna prove it's thanks to viagra they should find people who don't have sex, take viagra and have lower risk of developing Alzheimers.

cjbenedikt• 5 years ago

This may work just as well: https://www.webmd.com/vitamins-and-supplements/l-citrulline-...

Viagra Is Linked to Almost 70% Lower Risk of Alzheimer's

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