According to a study conducted by researchers at the Cleveland Clinic, sildenafil (Viagra) is associated with an approximately 70% reduction in the risk of Alzheimer’s disease. This result is based on the analysis of health insurance data of more than 2.7 million people and shows that people who took this drug were much less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease during the six years of follow-up than the control group who did not take this drug.
It is important to note that observed relationships such as these (even on a large scale) do not prove a causal relationship. For example, people in the sildenafil group may have another factor that helped them reduce their risk of Alzheimer’s. However, the researchers say that the correlation shown in this study (in addition to other indicators in the study) is sufficient to identify sildenafil as a promising candidate drug for Alzheimer’s disease, and given these results, its evaluation in randomized clinical trials is valuable. “Phishung Cheng, lead author of the study from the Cleveland Clinic, explains:
We found that taking sildenafil reduced the risk of Alzheimer’s disease in people with coronary heart disease, hypertension, and type 2 diabetes, all of which are significantly associated with the risk of Alzheimer’s disease.
This is not the first time sildenafil has been linked to better health outcomes. The drug has previously appeared in a number of promising areas, including malaria and cancer research.
Using the molecular symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease, the researchers used computational techniques to study the performance of a number of FDA-approved drugs against disease manifestations to see which FDA-approved drugs might be effective against the identified molecular symptoms of Alzheimer’s. Of the more than 1,600 drugs tested, sildenafil was one of the most promising candidates.
Given that Viagra is used to treat erectile dysfunction and pulmonary hypertension, this may seem confusing. But there has been evidence in the past that it may have other health benefits, given its interactions with tao and amyloid proteins. Tao and amyloid proteins are involved in Alzheimer’s pathology. Cheng says:
Recent studies show that the interaction between amyloid and tao plays a greater role in Alzheimer’s than the effect of each alone. We hypothesized that drugs that target the common amyloid and tao molecular networks should have the greatest potential for success … Sildenafil, shown in preclinical models, significantly improves cognition and memory as the best candidate is identified.
The above hypothesis seems to be confirmed by health insurance data. The researchers found that people who took sildenafil had a 69 percent lower risk of Alzheimer’s disease than others. This reduction was significantly greater than the other drugs studied in the study (including losartan, metformin, diltiazem, and glimperide).
Of course, researchers emphasize that their results do not show a causal relationship, but may contain promising clues.
In separate experiments that looked at how sildenafil might protect against cognitive decline from Alzheimer’s, human brain cells were studied in vitro. Neurons treated with this drug showed increased growth and decreased Tao accumulation.
Of course, these are the early stages of studies, but the effects described could be associated with a reduced risk of Alzheimer’s in the insurance group, and we need to look into this further. Cheng says:
We are planning a mechanistic trial (to understand the mechanism of action of the drug) and a randomized phase II clinical trial to test the causal relationship and clinical benefits of sildenafil for Alzheimer’s patients. We also anticipate that our approach could be applied to other neurodegenerative diseases, including Parkinson’s disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, to accelerate drug discovery.
The findings are reported in the journal Nature Aging.
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