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Men on Viagra may reduce their Alzheimer's risk – study
- fegu 3y agoOr these men simply lead more active lives with regular exercise. Hard to tell.
- _flux 3y agoWouldn't taking these kind of factors into account be quite basic part of the analysis? Of course, they cannot take everything into account.
- ant6n 3y agoWell, unless you lead a non-active life and hope to improve your health by taking viagra without the accompanying extra in activity.
- lm28469 3y agoThe problem with a lot modern science is that you're dealing with a virtually infinite numbers of variables both environmentally, behaviourally and genetically. Short of having a thousand identical twins locked up in a room from birth you're swimming against a very strong tide. Long gone are the days when science was as simple as castrating a rooster and grafting his balls back: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Adolph_Berthold https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Adolph_Berthold https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis
- helsinkiandrew 3y ago> Wouldn't taking these kind of factors into account be quite basic part of the analysis? They acknowledge that they are just looking at the number of prescriptions and that the research doesn't show that the drugs themselves were reducing people's risk. It could equally be the amount of sex that is reducing the risk.
- vanderZwan 3y agoI was thinking along similar lines: sildenafil (the active compound in viagra) was originally researched as a hypertension medication. The link between hypertension and dementia is well-established, and hypertension is also extremely common and relatively underdiagnosed. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sildenafil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sildenafil
- jgalt212 3y agoThe study is a bit more sophisticated than that.
- bun_terminator 3y agoThe study is called "Phosphodiesterase Type 5 Inhibitors in Men With Erectile Dysfunction and the Risk of Alzheimer Disease" and published in "Neurology", for reference. It's open access, link: https://doi.org/10.1212/WNL.0000000000209131 https://doi.org/10.1212/WNL.0000000000209131
- A_D_E_P_T 3y agoAll in all, it's not too surprising. The paper mentions neuroprotective effects, but it has been known for a while that nearly all types of PDE inhibitor can boost cognitive function, which has led to some interest in them as nootropics: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25464010/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25464010/ There has been some interest in PDE5 inhibitors, specifically, as treatments for Alzheimer's: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0361923019304319 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03619... And, in a 20 year old paper, a PDE5 inhibitor appears to have direct effects on memory consolidation in an animal model: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15312986/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15312986/ So, yeah, if I fancied myself at risk for dementia, I don't think it would be unwise to take viagra or sildenafil as a precautionary neuroprotective measure.
- wil421 3y agoDoes the main Viagra side effect have anything to do with it? A little more action might be helping too.
- brnt 3y agoCan women take viagra too? For the same cognitive effect?
- A_D_E_P_T 3y agoYes. It's also used in neonates, both male and female, for its ability to treat pulmonary hypertension -- but also, it is now emerging, for its neuroprotective properties: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fncel.2022.879649/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fncel.2022.8796... From the same paper, there's some indication that its cognitive effects might be more potent in women, as "[s]everal studies have suggested that sex hormones may influence the effects of sildenafil on the brain. Female mice performed significantly better than males after sildenafil treatment following HI insult, which suggests a sex-dependent effect of sildenafil (Engels et al., 2017). The underlying mechanism might be related to the relationship between sex hormones and the NO/cGMP pathway."
- finnjohnsen2 3y agoPlease let's make a downvote free thread for throwing jokes a round on this topic. We need this freedom for such a topic trending on HN. There is so much low hanging fruit and we're all thinking of several I suspect. My initial thought was in the lane of 'drug is affecting one more head than intended', but it's missing some refinement I'll admit
- jonplackett 3y agoI nominate this specific comment thread for this purpose.
- jonplackett 3y agoI’ll take that as a no…
- jgrahamc 3y agoNo, let's not. We don't "need this freedom". And we're not "all thinking of several". Grow up.
- Log_out_ 3y agoChildish mindset is more likely to innovate though. For hacking ones environment, growing up makes one ineffective. Then again, so does low effort Dopamin bombarding content consumption. Then again it creates a nice little pocket universe meta discussion.
- finnjohnsen2 3y agoBut it's a drug already helping many elderly stay sexually active, and now they also remember with who. This is great news. And kinda funny.
- jgrahamc 3y agoAnd you're welcome to find it funny. But I don't welcome a long thread of Reddit-style stupid jokes about this here. If I wanted that I'd go to Reddit.
- renegade-otter 3y agoIt's all the cardio, bro. Mystery solved. Next!
- andy_ppp 3y agoMaybe the brain get's worse at clearing stuff out as your blood vessels age and viagra is opening them up? Cardio, weight lifting, HIIT, sauna, healthy balanced diet, yoga, inversions, beetroot juice, citrulline malate, etc. could all be worthy of investigation ;-)
- Xeyz0r 3y agoPhysical activity and a healthy lifestyle positively impact the body in any case. I would even add psychological well-being and, so to speak, harmony with oneself
- vanderZwan 3y agoI think that was the joke they were going for.
- m463 3y agoalso, sex. (more seriously, anything that improves your circulation will probably help with alzheimers, plus good sleep)
- Xeyz0r 3y agoYes, sex is just awesome in every sense. Regular sex lowers the level of stress in the body and increases the level of oxytocin. As a result, people feel more motivated to work and experience greater satisfaction from their work as soon as the stress level decreases. It also leads to increased life expectancy, so people have more time to work and more time to have sex - it's a complete cycle
- andyferris 3y ago> it’s a complete cycle See also, the other point of sex.
- piva00 3y ago> people feel more motivated to work and experience greater satisfaction from their work It kinda weirded me out to see work/productivity being listed in regards to benefits of sex. Yeah, it might help but this way of thinking sounds absolutely horrendous.
- Throw73747 3y agoViagra is a medication used to treat pulmonary arterial hypertension. Better blood flow is one of the results.
- whatscooking 3y agoWe should make a vaccine instead of repurposing established drugs amirite?
- actionfromafar 3y agoSo many possible confounding factors. Men in partnerships are healthier, for one. There's also possible selection bias! Edit based on comment below: possibly I am too cynical :-D
- globular-toast 3y agoImagine telling someone you made a website and they're like "cool, but did you even make sure it has the little green padlock?"
- sjducb 3y agoThe parent post makes a good point that it’s very hard to do this kind of research well. We should default to skepticism. There is a replication crisis on right now.
- ethbr1 3y agoDefault to curious, active skepticism. That means looking at methods, discussing confounding factors and how they were and weren't handled correctly, and what alternatives could have been employed. There's a similar form of dismissive, passive skepticism that says: science has problems, so it's not even worth looking harder. Note: I'm assuming good faith on part of parent, so not pointing fingers. But it is a thing I've seen on HN, especially re: biology. Tl;dr - don't tl;dr science.
- frognumber 3y agoGood points. I will comment though: Passive skepticism is important too. At this stage, the bigger problem is treating one study outcome as if it were fact. Dismissing established, well-replicated science is, of course, a problem as well, but at least from what I've seen, the much bigger problem is that you have one correlational study. Popular media runs with it. People make products based on it. The underlying science is nonsense. The good news is that it's also possible to solve. There is constant progress in science, of course, but if we ignore all science from the past 20 years, we're still left with pretty good science (at least for the level of policy-making and personal decision-making). Simply ignoring anything recent solves the hype problem. And for all the anti-vaxxers and flat earthers, those are still minorities since recognizing established science is actually not especially hard.
- dkekenflxlf 3y agois it safe to assume, that this ffect is rue for taladafil/sindemafil based pills?
- isaacfrond 3y agoA study for tadalafil or sildenafil would probably show the same effects. Not because of common mechanism that prevents Alzheimer, but because such studies would probably plagued by the same methodological problems.
- dreamcompiler 3y agoIt's a vasodilator, which is means it also reduces blood pressure (that was the drug's original purpose). So it's conceivable that it could clear a wider exit pathway for amyloid plaques and other garbage that accumulates in the brain. It's also why a significant fraction of men who take it develop headaches so painful that sex is the last thing on their mind. Welcome to vasodilators. Oh and if you already take nitroglycerin for cardiac angina, you can't take viagra because you get twice the headache -- right before you pass out because your blood pressure crashed.
- trashface 3y agoCan someone explain how the study could successfully adjust for men in relationships taking this kind of med vs (especially) long time single men who don't? Especially in older men, these groups can look nothing like each other.