New study shows a link between erectile dysfunction treatment and high-risk sexual behavior.
Erectile dysfunction is nothing to laugh about (especially if you have it). Neither are STDs (especially if you have them).
Reuters reports that a new study by Dr. Anupam Jena’s of the Harvard Medical School has found that men who take supplements such as Viagra are at a higher risk for contracting sexually transmitted infections, including AIDS.
Jena’s team took 33,968 men who were being treated for ED and reviewed their health insurance records. They also looked at more than 1 million men who weren’t.
The results? Rates of HIV per 100,000 men in the previous year were 66.5 for men who didn’t get an ED drug, but 147.2 for men who did. Rates of chlamydia where almost triple for men who took an ED drug—41 per 100,000 compared to 15 per 100,000 for men not using the drugs.
Popular ED drugs in the survey included: Pfizer’s Viagra (also called sildenafil or vardenafil), GlaxoSmithKline’s Levitra, and Eli Lilly and Co’s Cialis (both also known as tadalafil).
Researchers reported in the Annals of Internal Medicine that the link seems to be behavioral, not chemical:
“Users of ED (erectile dysfunction) drugs had higher rates of HIV, chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis in the 12 months before filling their first ED drug prescription, although only HIV and chlamydia were statistically significant in this period,” Jena’s team wrote.
“At a minimum, use of ED drugs seems to correlate with higher-risk sexual behavior, either in the number or type of sexual encounters.”
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Talk about a boner-kill.
—Seth Putnam
Condoms create additional problems for men suffering ET. Men start taking the ET drugs for symptom relief and then the condoms bring the problem back again. It’s a vicious cycle.