An unexpected side effect of medications for an enlarged prostate

What can a disease like? Benign prostatic hyperplasia and neurodegenerative pathologies such as Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s disease? A team of researchers from the University of Iowa Health Sciences (USA) found that Some drugs used to treat the former may protect against some types of dementia. The key appears to be a specific side effect of drugs targeting a biological defect common to neurodegenerative diseases.

For research published in a journal Neurology, The researchers used a large database of patient information to identify More than 643,000 men with no history of dementia started taking one of six drugs used to treat benign prostatic hyperplasia. Three drugs: terazosin, doxazosin and alfuzosin (Tz/Dz/Az) have an unexpected side effect: they can increase energy production in brain cells. Preclinical studies suggest this ability may help slow down or prevent diseases such as Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s.

The other drugs, finasteride and dutasteride, did not increase energy production in the brain and therefore helped the researchers test the former’s effect.

“One of the most interesting things about this study is that we found the same neuroprotective effect that we saw in Parkinson’s disease. If a broad defense mechanism exists, these drugs may could potentially be used to treat or prevent other neurodegenerative diseases.”said lead study author Jacob Zimmering, assistant professor of internal medicine at the UI, according to Ep.

The team tracked data on these men from the time they started taking the drug until they dropped out of the database or developed dementia, whichever came first. On average, men were I followed for about three years.

The researchers also matched the men using propensity scores on characteristics such as age, the year they started taking the medications and other medical conditions they had before starting treatment, to further reduce differences between the groups. “Overall, men taking drugs like terazosin experienced approximately 40% lower risk of developing dementia compared with men taking tamsulosin, and a risk reduction of about 37% compared with men taking five alpha-reductase inhibitors,” Zimmering said.

Since it was observational study The results only show an association between taking Tz/Dz/Az drugs and a lower risk of dementia, but not a cause-and-effect relationship. Researchers have become enthusiastic about the potential of these drugs because They are approved by international regulatory authorities, are inexpensive and have been used safely for decades.