Taking Viagra, HRT, a statin or a painkiller was linked to a slightly lower chance of people dying over a 12-year study, suggesting the drugs may have life-extending properties
The medicines are Viagra, for erectile dysfunction; atorvastatin, used to lower cholesterol levels; an anti-inflammatory and pain-killing drug called naproxen; and oestrogen, a component of hormone-replacement therapy (HRT).
The idea that existing prescription medicines could have life-extending effects on top of their known benefits for certain medical conditions has a long history. “We don’t want to cure or treat a single disease, we want to prevent many of them,” says Alejandro Ocampo at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland.
Atorvastatin or Lipitor seem very good in general and that is the statin I take, it has a likely decrease in ACM in at least two studies for primary prevention [1][2], long use and increase after patent expired [3], few possible side effects, decreases CRP, first choice statin in NICE recommendations [5], lower causal risks than rosuvastatin [4], studied right now for dementia prevention etc in STAREE. [1]
The largest difference in death rate was seen in women taking medicines containing oestrogen, mainly HRT products. These were linked with about a 25 per cent lower death rate over the study than in similar women who didn’t take the hormone.
The list of drugs that increased mortality was intriguing. Two of them were laxatives. Another one was Thiamine (vitamin B1) - why would that increase mortality?
I’d have to assume there’s got to be some self selection bias at work — who would ever take thiamine specifically unless they have exotic disorders it is recommended for?
Also laxatives might be indicative of poor gi flora or poor dietary fiber intake etc. Hard to control for this stuff.
Thiamine is used to treat Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome. So many in the cohort could have an alcohol problem.
I can think of quite a lot of confounders both ways for the other drugs. Atorvastatin and hrt use strongly correlate with socioeconomic status for example.
I’m still surprised we don’t have better data for statins in primary prevention. The best study we have is the swedish study. And that only found borderline significance for acm.
I’m convinced that we should target low apob, and i believe statins are protective for acm in primary prevention at a population level. But I’m frustrated that we don’t have better evidence.
The issue is that the trials are stopped after just a few years out of monetary and ethical considerations. This one just lasted a median of 3.3 years.
I find Naprosyn to be interesting since it has significant potential negative side effects. You need to decrease inflammation without damaging stomach and kidneys.