These drugs attack gunge called beta amyloid which builds up in the brains of people with Alzheimer's.
A new study has claimed that drugs used to treat erectile dysfunction could be linked with a reduction in the risk of Alzheimer's disease. According to a report in The Guardian, men who were prescribed Viagra and similar medications were 18 per cent less likely to develop the most common form of dementia later in life than those who didn't take any such drug. The effect was strong in men with most prescriptions, scientists found in their research published in an online issue of Neurology.
Though the research shows an association between the drugs and a reduced risk of Alzheimer's, it cannot determine whether pills like Viagra protect against Alzheimer's.
"We can't say that the drugs are responsible, but this does give us food for thought on how we move into the future," lead author Dr Ruth Brauer, from University College London, told The Guardian. "We now need a proper clinical trial to look at the effects of these drugs on Alzheimer's in women as well as men."
The study is based on an analysis of the medical records of more than 260,000 men who were diagnosed with erectile dysfunction but had no medical issue with memory.
More than half of them were taking PDE5 inhibitor drugs, including sildenafil (sold as Viagra), avanafil, vardenafil and tadalafil. The researchers tracked them for five years for any cases of Alzheimer's.
As per the BBC, these drugs attack gunge called beta amyloid which builds up in the brains of people with Alzheimer's. The research team believes that this discovery has the potential to change the way the disease is treated.
Drugs like Viagra are known to affect activity in the brain cells. They were originally designed to treat high blood pressure and angina.
Dr Francesco Tamagnini, neurophysiologist at the University of Reading, told the BBC that it was "a great study", but more hard evidence on how the drug affected the brain was needed.