Viagra useful in treating Alzheimer’s disease, research finds

US researchers say users of sildenafil – the generic name for Viagra – are 69% less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease.

Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of dementia, has no effective treatment currently, despite affecting millions of people worldwide.

Viagra has now been found as a possible treatment against Alzheimer’s disease, according to a US study.

Researchers from Cleveland Clinic aimed to determine which of the 1,600 Food and Drug Administration-approved drugs could be a treatment for Alzheimer’s disease. Higher scores were given to drugs that targeted two genetic hallmarks of Alzheimer’s as opposed to one.

The researchers then narrowed this down to 66 drugs, one of which was Sildenfal, and considered promising results from experiments in animal models to push Viagra as the most promising candidate.

Overall, they discovered that claimants who were prescribed sildenafil had a 69% reduced risk of Alzheimer’s over the following six years.

They found that the drug promoted the growth of new nerve projections and decreased tau accumulation in the cells, which decreased the risk for Alzheimer’s.

However, researchers emphasised that only clinical trials can bring definite proof over whether this will be an effective treatment, as there’s not a causal relationship found yet