The erectile dysfunction drug Viagra may be linked to a 69% lower risk of Alzheimerʼs disease, found a US analysis of medical insurance data and a genomic study in Nature Aging.
Researchers found that using sildenafil (Viagra) was associated with a 69% reduced risk of Alzheimerʼs disease, when accounting for other factors like sex, race and age. The team analysed insurance claims data from more than 7m people and used computer modelling to look for drugs that might target areas in dementia. They found that men on Viagra had a substantially lower risk of Alzheimerʼs disease, and called for more research into its potential use.
Doctors prescribe sildenafil to treat erectile dysfunction and pulmonary arterial hypertension. However, several studies in mice, and a few pilot studie sin humans, have hinted that sildenafil could also treat Alzheimer’s disease.
The study was led by the Genomic Medicine Institute at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, and the authors said they cannot definitely say there is a causal relationship between Viagra and Alzheimerʼs, but called for this to be tested in a clinical trial.
Lead investigator Dr Feixiong Cheng said the findings were encouraging but more work was needed. “Because our findings only establish an association between sildenafil use and reduced incidence of Alzheimerʼs disease, we are now planning a mechanistic trial and a phase II randomised clinical trial to test causality and confirm sildenafilʼs clinical benefits for Alzheimerʼs patients,” he said.
“Developing drugs for diseases, like Alzheimer’s, which attack the brain, is a costly process and can take many years,” Dr Susan Kohlhaas, director of research at Alzheimer’s Research UK told Medical News Today. “Being able to repurpose a drug already licensed for other health conditions could help speed up the drug discovery process and bring about life-changing dementia treatments sooner,” she said.
Study details
Endophenotype-based in silico network medicine discovery combined with insurance record data mining identifies sildenafil as a candidate drug for Alzheimer’s disease
Jiansong Fang, Pengyue Zhang, Yadi Zhou, Chien-Wei Chiang, Juan Tan, Yuan Hou, Shaun Stauffer, Lang Li, Andrew A. Pieper, Jeffrey Cummings & Feixiong Cheng
Published in Nature Aging on 6 December 2021
Abstract
We developed an endophenotype disease module-based methodology for Alzheimer’s disease (AD) drug repurposing and identified sildenafil as a potential disease risk modifier. Based on retrospective case–control pharmacoepidemiologic analyses of insurance claims data for 7.23 million individuals, we found that sildenafil usage was significantly associated with a 69% reduced risk of AD (hazard ratio 0.31, 95% confidence interval 0.25–0.39, P < 1.0 × 10–8). Propensity score-stratified analyses confirmed that sildenafil is significantly associated with a decreased risk of AD across all four drug cohorts tested (diltiazem, glimepiride, losartan and metformin) after adjusting for age, sex, race and disease comorbidities.
We also found that sildenafil increases neurite growth and decreases phospho-tau expression in neuron models derived from induced pluripotent stem cells from patients with AD, supporting mechanistically its potential beneficial effect in AD. The association between sildenafil use and decreased incidence of AD does not establish causality, which will require a randomised controlled trial.
Medical News Today article – Could Viagra reduce Alzheimer’s risk? (Open access)
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