Viagra Can Lower Risk Of Alzheimer’s, Study Shows

Viagra isn’t just for love anymore. A recent study has shown the drug might help to treat Alzheimer’s disease by using the impotence drug to study effects on the brain.

Researchers in Cleveland have found so far that men who were taking the pill, also known as sildenafil, had a lower risk of Alzheimer’s, using analysis of a database of over 7.2 million patients over six years.

They also found that those who took higher than usual doses of the pill displayed an increase in brain cell growth and reduced protein accumulation. The pill is best known to aid with erectile dysfunction.

“Because our findings only establish an association between sildenafil use and reduced incidence of Alzheimer’s disease, we are now planning a mechanistic trial and a phase ll randomized clinical trait to test causality and confirm sildenafil’s clinical benefits for Alzheimer’s patients,” research leader Dr. Feixiong Cheng reportedly told the Nature Aging journal.

The research is still in the early stages and more has to be studied in order to see how the drug could be used for treating Alzheimer’s.

If research does support the hypothesis of Viagra showing a positive treatment for the disease, it would be a major advancement in Alzheimer’s research and would offer a more efficient path than developing an entirely new treatment for the disease.

Viagra was originally meant to treat the heart and has the ability to relax blood vessels and subsequently improve blood flow in other parts of the body. It can also be used to treat pulmonary hypertension.