A Viagra a day keeps the neurologist away?
This is the suggestion from a retrospective study from the University College of London (UCL) published in the journal Neurology which followed 269,725 men over 40 with erectile dysfunction and no dementia for 5 years. Those men who received phosphodiesterase type 5 inhibitors (PDE-5I) like Viagra, and Cialis were 18% less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of dementia, than those who did not receive them. The Alzheimer’s risk dropped further to 44% for men who received more than 20 prescriptions of PDE5-Is.
These findings contradict those from the recent NIH DREAM study, which showed no association of Viagra and Cialis with reduced Alzheimer’s disease risk.
But they do agree with a previous 2021 study, backed by the National Institute of Aging, which suggested that Cialis users were 69% less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease than non-users. These PDE-5 inhibitors prevent the breakdown of the vasodilator, nitric oxide (NO), which increases blood flow to the penis—and to other areas like the brain.
The EpicentRx lead small molecule, RRx-001 (nibrozetone) donates or releases nitric oxide only in diseased areas where oxygen levels are low. This mechanism may explain the beneficial effects seen with RRx-001 (nibrozetone) in animal models of neurodegenerative disease like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and ALS/MND.
What is needed now are randomized prospective clinical trials to formally test whether PDE-5 inhibitors and NO donors like RRx-001 (nibrozetone) reduce Alzheimer’s risk.
We suppose—chuckle—one might call this “hard” science.