Author Interviews, Erectile Dysfunction, Melanoma, PLoS / 16.06.2016
Erectile Dysfunction Drugs Unlikely to Cause Increase in Melanoma
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Anthony Matthews
Department of Non-Communicable Disease Epidemiology, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
London, United Kingdom
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Dr. Mathews: :The drug Viagra, which is used to treat erectile dysfunction, is one of a class of drugs called PDE5 inhibitors. Laboratory studies of cells from the skin cancer, malignant melanoma, suggest that PDE5 inhibitors might promote their growth, so there have been some concerns that people using these drugs might have an increased risk of malignant melanoma. Two previous studies comparing melanoma rates in PDE5 inhibitor users and non-users came to differing conclusions so we wanted to look further into this. To carry out the study we used anonymised GP records from the UK identifying over 150,000 men with a PDE5 inhibitor prescription, and over 500,000 men of a similar age, and from the same areas, who didn’t have a PDE5 inhibitor prescription. We then looked for later diagnoses of malignant melanoma to see how people’s exposure to PDE5 inhibitors affected their future risk of being diagnosed with melanoma.
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