Higher Rates of Contacting STDs By Men Using Erectile Dysfunction Drugs Studies Show
I’ve seen this in the news and thought I’d comment on it after studying it a little and I can see this trend as not being surprising. The scientists doing the study analyzed the insurance records of 1.4 million men in the United States over 40. They posted their results for the July 6th edition of Annals of Internal Medicine.
The scientists came to the conclusion that probably the men taking the ED drugs participated in higher-risk sexual practices. It looks like primary care physicians don’t discuss ways to reduce risk factors with their older patients as much as their younger ones. Most users of ED drugs are middle aged to older so they probably were not counseled. That can be further verified by the following quote by one of the authors of the study
“Anyone who does not practice safer sex, no matter their age, can contract an STD,” says Anupam B. Jena, MD, PhD, of the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Department of Medicine, the study’s lead author. “Even though STDs are quite rare among older men – on the order of 1 per 1,000 individuals – we found that STD rates in men who used ED drugs were two to three times higher, both before and after they filled their first prescription.”
Physicians that have looked at the result think that the rates could go down if physicians as well as the pharmacists dispensing the ED drugs counsel their older patients on the risks.
