JAMA Internal Medicine published a study in 2014… the study that was done found that men who used Sildenafil (Viagra), an erection-enhancing drug, had an 84% chance of developing melanoma over a span of 10 years. Melanoma is a form of skin cancer… it is the most dangerous form there is. The study is deemed something that has been misunderstood; and there is some discrepancy within it. There are, however, some truths that are found within the study that you would want to know about.
The first of the two is that the study that was done does not, in fact, show that using Viagra would cause skin cancer. What it does show is that in a group of men those that said they used Viagra ended up having a diagnosis of melanoma more often than those men that didn’t use it. That means there was a connection between the two, but it doesn’t show that Viagra was the cause for it. The second truth is that if Viagra does in fact stimulate melanoma, the odds of it happening are small.
Dr. Hensin Tsao, a melanoma and skin cancer expert at Harvard-affiliate Massachusetts General Hospital was asked what his thoughts of the study were. His perspective on things was in essence the study in and of itself is an interesting one; it does call for more research, but men should not be worried about Viagra being the cause of melanoma just yet. While you shouldn’t be worried about Viagra causing melanoma, you should in fact be worried about melanoma.
The study initially came from laboratory research that was done… this research was looking at how Viagra signals pathways on a cell-to-cell basis. The work that was done showed that Viagra does impersonate vital parts of a process that does in fact let melanoma cells spread from one part of the body to other parts. When skin cancer spreads it very hard to control it and it can have an ending result of death.
As of now, it is unclear if men that take Viagra should worry… the relationship between Viagra and melanoma can be coincidental. What you do want is to protect your skin from too much sun and make sure to have it checked routinely so if you do have melanoma or other types of skin cancer it can be detected early on while things are treatable.