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Viagra pills: Promote blood circulation and possibly memory
Photo: A3386 Uli Deck / dpa
Alzheimer's disease is the most common type of dementia.
Alzheimer's disease is attributed to 60 percent of the approximately 25 million dementia cases worldwide.
So far, the disease has been considered incurable and difficult to treat.
Now a team of scientists from the Cleveland Clinic's Genomic Medicine Institute under the direction of Feixiong Cheng has come across an important finding in the fight against Alzheimer's.
They published the preliminary results of an encouraging study in the journal Nature Aging. According to this, there is a connection between taking sildefanil and the occurrence of Alzheimer's disease. Sildefanil is the active ingredient in the erection pill Viagra, which was originally developed as a heart medication because it increases blood flow. Sildefanil is also used for other diseases such as pulmonary hypertension.
Cheng and his team wanted to find out whether FDA-approved drugs could also be used in Alzheimer's patients. The reallocation of medical active ingredients for other forms of therapy is cheaper and much less complicated than the research and approval of new active ingredients. As part of the study, data from more than seven million patients and more than 1,600 approved drugs were evaluated.
The result: In patients who regularly take sildefanil, 69 percent fewer cases of Alzheimer's were identified than in patients who do not take it. In preclinical models, the research team found that sildefanil stimulates the growth of brain cells and addresses amyloids and tau proteins, which play a crucial role in Alzheimer's disease. Cognition and memory could be significantly improved with the use of sildefanil, Cheng said. So far, however, it has only been proven that the intake of the active ingredient correlates with the lower incidence of the disease. Clinical studies should now prove the causality and show whether and how sildefanil can also be used in Alzheimer's therapy.
International experts welcome the study, but warn against too much euphoria.
The BBC quotes British neuroscientist Tara Spiers-Jones from the University of Edinburgh as saying: "Even if the data are scientifically interesting, I would not rush to take sildefanil for Alzheimer's disease based on this study."
Susan Kohlhaas, director of the British Alzheimer's Research Center, told the Guardian: “This study does not prove that sildefanil is responsible for a lower risk of dementia or that it can slow down or stop the disease.
The only way to find out is through a large-scale clinical trial. "
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