Viagra & Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) Prevention/Treatment: Cleveland Clinic Research Identifies Sildenafil (Viagra) As Candidate Drug for AD; Retrospective Findings Show 69% Reduced Likelihood of Developing the Disease; Follow-Up Clinical Trial Needed

A new Cleveland Clinic-led study has identified sildenafil--an FDA-approved therapy for erectile dysfunction (Viagra) and pulmonary hypertension (Revatio)--as a promising drug candidate to help prevent and treat Alzheimer’s disease. According to findings published online on December 6, 2021 in Nature Aging, a research team, led by Feixiong Cheng, PhD, of Cleveland Clinic’s Genomic Medicine Institute, used computational methodology to screen and validate FDA-approved drugs as potential therapies for Alzheimer’s disease. Through a large-scale analysis of a database of more than 7 million patients, the researchers determined that sildenafil is associated with a 69% reduced incidence of Alzheimer’s disease, indicating the need for follow-up clinical trial testing of the drug’s efficacy in patients with the disease. The article is titled “Endophenotype-Based in Silico Network Medicine Discovery Combined with Insurance Record Data Mining Identifies Sildenafil As a Candidate Drug For Alzheimer’s Disease.”