Should women use sildenafil to reduce their risk of Alzheimer’s disease? Elizabeth Tracey reports

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Men who reported taking sildenafil for erectile dysfunction also had a reduced risk for Alzheimer’s disease, a recent study looking at a large number of medical records found. What about women? Johns Hopkins geriatrics expert Lolita Nidadavolu, who wrote an editorial on the study, says she would not recommend this right now.

Nidadavolu: For women you're seeing this vasodilation that's happening everywhere so there would be a lot of blood pressure type changes and side effects that would be happening, especially for folks that are already on blood pressure medications there's a lot of drug drug interactions with sildenafil and these other classes of erectile dysfunction medications. I certainly wouldn't recommend women to suddenly start taking any family member’s Viagra especially without talking with the physician or their pharmacist about the many drug drug interactions that could be there.    :31

Nidadavolu notes that lifestyle changes are also important to reduce dementia risk. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.