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The world’s first introduction to Viagra was as a cardiovascular medication, meant to dilate blood vessels around the heart to treat symptoms of angina. But there was one little issue: the drug seemed to be dilating blood vessels just a bit further south than initially intended. When the men in clinical trials reported all-night erections instead of improved heart symptoms, the now-ubiquitous little blue pill was born.
Sildenafil, the active ingredient in Viagra, has already proved it’s no one trick pony, but new research suggests the drug may have another use—and it could be life-saving. A study published in the journal Cancer Research in July found that sildenafil may help slow the spread of cancer by triggering a mechanism that binds up the body’s cholesterol. This makes it more difficult for cancer to metastasize, which Sanjay Juneja, MD, a triple board-certified hematologist and medical oncologist who goes by @TheOncDoc on social media, says is responsible for more than 90% of cancer deaths.
According to Dr. Juneja, cancer needs a raft to travel from one spot in the body to another. Cholesterol, he says, is “intimately involved” in building that raft that allows cancer to spread.
“What Viagra does is it locks [cholesterol] up so it can’t be used as readily for those purposes,” Dr. Juneja says. “When you’re locking it up by taking Viagra, you’re limiting something we know is key in a cancer cell’s ability to move around.”
By analyzing mouse cancer models, cancer cells cultured from human patients, and two decades of medical data involving about 5 million cases from Israel’s Clalit Health Services, researchers found that men who were taking sildenafil before and during their cancer treatment had better survival rates than men who were not taking the drug. Men who took both sildenafil and statins—a drug that lowers cholesterol—had even better outcomes.
While Dr. Juneja called the research exciting, he said people who are diagnosed with cancer shouldn’t expect a Viagra prescription to follow quite yet—more research is needed. But he noted that people who already have a Viagra prescription and who are diagnosed with cancer probably don’t need to stop taking it. In other words, don’t kick the little blue pill out of bed just yet.
