By Sunday Citizen reporter

Men who take drugs for erectile dysfunction have more sexually transmitted diseases than non-users, before and after they start using the drugs. The observed association between Erectile Dysfunction drug use and STDs may have more to do with the types of patients using ED drugs rather than a direct effect of ED drug availability on STD rates.

 

 The study led by Dr.Anupam B. Jena of Massachussets  General Hospital and published in the July 6 issue of Annals of Internal Medicine based its research on the increased sexual activity among  patients who were using these drugs.It is not that the drugs somehow contribute to the diseases, the researchers have emphasized.

Men who used the drugs had almost three times the rate of sexually transmitted diseases as non-users, even before they started taking them. During the year after receiving a prescription, users had almost three times the rate of non-users. They were particularly at a high risk of contracting HIV ,syphilis, gonorrhea and for Chlamydia, an infection that causes infertility in women.

 

ED drugs have gained popularity among middle aged and older men. More divorces and better health are also noted to have conspired to boost sexual prowess and activity among older men. Researchers too, have noted that 50-year-olds are six times less likely to use a condom than men in their 20s. While the latter are expected to have higher infection incidences studies show that they are more likely to use condoms during sex or be tested for HIV/AIDS. All this factors are contributing to a large extent to erode the age related difference given the risk of contracting STD’s. Nevertheless prevention strategies should still be directed at younger age groups, whose STD risk is at least 10 times higher than in middle-aged and older adults, according to Dr. Jena.

 

To test whether the introduction of Viagra in 1998 might explain some of the STD surge, the study followed 33,968 men who had been prescribed an erectile dysfunction drug in the period from 1997 to 2006, and more than a million men who never used the drugs. The researchers analyzed information from a private insurance billing database to compare the rates of disease before and after men started using the drugs.

 

Generally, users of erectile dysfunction drugs appear to be having more unsafe sexual encounters than non-users. “Physicians prescribing ED drugs for their male patients and pharmacists who fill those prescriptions should discuss with their patients the importance of safer sex practices as well as advise screening for STD’s,” recommends Dr. Jena.