Erectile dysfunction drugs may be associated with lower risk of Alzheimer’s disease | helplessness | diseases | WORLD

Drugs used for treatment erectile disfunction may be associated with a lower risk of developing the disease Alzheimer’s diseasesays a study published today by the journal Neurology.

The work does not prove that these types of drugs reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s disease, “it only shows an association,” the American Academy of Neurology, which publishes the aforementioned journal, emphasized.

The study, conducted by University College London, examined the medical records of 269,725 men with an average age of 59 who had recently been diagnosed with erectile disfunctionbut who did not have problems with memory or thinking at the beginning of the study.

A comparison was made of 55% of participants who were assigned medicines for erectile disfunction with 45% of those who do not.

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The average follow-up period was about five years, and during this period the disease developed in 1,119 people. Alzheimer’s disease.

The data collected was adjusted for other factors that could affect the incidence of Alzheimer’s disease, such as age, smoking and alcohol consumption.

As a result, people taking anti-inflammatory drugs erectile disfunction They were 18% less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease than those who did not, the American Academy of Neurology added in a note.

The study was based on prescription records, and the authors indicated that the association between medication use and reduced disease risk was greater among those who filled more prescriptions during the study period.

Additionally, they stated that one limitation of the study is that it was based on volume of prescription drug use, so they did not have information about whether participants actually used the medications.

Study leader Ruth Brower, from University College, said “more research is needed to confirm these findings, learn more about the possible benefits and mechanisms of action of these drugs, and explore optimal dosing.”

Commenting on the study, in which he was not involved, Ivan Koichev from the University of Oxford emphasized the limitations of using the number of recipes to collect data.

“These types of drugs are typically taken on an as-needed basis, so it is difficult to know how much was actually taken and how often,” he told the Science Media Center, a science resource base for journalists.

Moreover, he appreciated that “relationships with disease Alzheimer’s diseaseis particularly controversial because it is known that a significant proportion of dementia cases are clinically diagnosed as an additional or alternative pathology to Alzheimer’s disease.

Researcher Tara Spears-Jones, president of the British Association of Neurosciences, reiterated that the study “does not conclusively prove” that anti-inflammatory drugs erectile disfunction reduce the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease, “but this provides strong evidence that it is worth continuing to study this type of drug in the future.”

Director of Research at the British Liya Mursalin, Alzheimer’s disease researcher He agreed that this is an “encouraging finding” but it still does not confirm “whether they are directly responsible for reducing the risk of Alzheimer’s disease and whether they can slow or stop the disease.”

For this reason, he estimates that additional research will be required, including clinical trials— to confirm whether they may play a role in the prevention or treatment of Alzheimer’s disease, and to establish whether they may have an impact on other groups, such as women and men without a diagnosis of erectile function.

This is not the first time research has linked Alzheimer’s disease to these drugs. Natural aging published a study in 2021 that identified sildenafil, an active ingredient used in some drugs to treat erectile dysfunction, as a potential drug to prevent and treat the condition.