VIAGRA does more than improve men’s performance in bed — it also makes them live longer, a study shows.
The impotence drug has been found to prolong the lives of heart attack survivors.
And the more often they use it, the lower their risk of another attack.
Impotence can be an early warning sign of cardiovascular disease in healthy men.
It is treated either with alprostadil, which dilates the blood vessels so that the penis stiffens, or with PDE5 inhibitors such as Viagra or Cialis tablets. The pills are taken before sex and increase blood flow to the penis.
A team at the Karolinska Institute, in Solna, Sweden, studied 16,500 men treated with Viagra and almost 2,000 who were given alprostadil and compared the effects.
The patients had either a stroke, balloon dilation or a coronary artery bypass surgery at least six months before starting treatment for erectile dysfunction.
The study found that men who took Viagra or Cialis lived longer and had a lower risk of new heart attack, heart failure, balloon dilation and bypass surgery than those who received alprostadil.
Researcher Professor Martin Holzmann said: “It is possible that those who received PDE5 inhibitors were healthier than those on alprostadil and therefore had a lower risk.
“To ascertain whether it is the drug that reduces the risk, we would need to randomly assign patients to two groups, one that takes PDE5 and one that doesn’t.
“The results we have now give us very good reason to embark on such a study.”
The research was published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
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