Can Naproxen Help You Live Longer?

By Pat Anson, PNN Editor

There may be a hidden benefit to the pain reliever naproxen. The non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) is primarily used to treat arthritis, muscle aches and joint pain, but might also give a boost to your life expectancy, according to the results of a preliminary study.

An international research team analyzed 12-years of health records for over 500,000 people enrolled in the UK Biobank study to see if prescription drugs taken for at least 3 months were associated with higher or lower death rates. Over 400 medications were studied, with patients who were prescribed the drugs compared to control groups that didn’t take them.

“As expected, most drugs harbor a negative effect on lifespan, probably due to the underlying negative effect of the disease the drug is intended for. Importantly, a few drugs seem to have a beneficial effect on lifespan,” wrote lead author Alejandro Ocampo, PhD, a professor at the University of Lausanne and CEO of Epiterna, a Swiss company studying ways to slow the ageing process.        

Ocampo and his colleagues identified four medications associated with lower death rates:

• Naproxen   

• Atorvastatin (a statin)

• Estradiol (female hormone replacement)

• Sildenafil (Viagra)

Statins have long been known to reduce the risk of heart attack and stroke, while estradiol lowers the risk of osteoporosis and bone fractures in post-menopausal women. Sildenafil is well known for treating erectile dysfunction, but also improves cardiovascular health and may even protect against Alzheimer's disease. It’s easy to see how those drugs might increase life expectancy.

The inclusion of naproxen is a bit of a surprise. The active ingredient in Aleve and other over-the-counter pain relievers, naproxen raises the risk of a heart attack, stroke or internal bleeding when taken in high doses or used long-term. High doses of naproxen in 250mg and 500mg tablets are available by prescription, which is what people in the study were taking.

Even at those high doses, researchers found that naproxen was associated with a 10% lower death rate when compared to people who didn’t take the drug. The protective effect was strongest for men on naproxen, who had mortality rates that were 13% lower.

The findings are preliminary, have not been peer-reviewed, and don’t establish a cause-and-effect relationship. We don’t know why or how naproxen helps people live longer, only that it’s associated with a longer lifespan.  

Interestingly, the research team found that two other pain relievers – morphine and paracetamol (acetaminophen) – are associated with shorter lifespans. Again, this may have more to do with the underlying conditions the drugs were prescribed for, rather than the medications themselves.

Ocampo says more research and clinical studies are needed to get a better understanding of the long-term harms and benefits of medication.

“The benefit on lifespan observed for several drugs in this retrospective study could only be truly determined by performing randomized controlled trials. Such studies would aim at treating a healthy aging population with a drug during a sufficiently long follow-up to be able to observe the effect on all-cause mortality,” Ocampo wrote.

If the life expectancy benefits are proven, researchers say it could result in some drugs being “repurposed” as anti-aging treatments for otherwise healthy older adults.

Can Viagra Treat Diabetic Neuropathy?

By Pat Anson, Editor

An experimental animal study suggest that sildenafil, an erectile dysfunction drug commonly known by the brand name Viagra, may be effective in relieving symptoms of peripheral neuropathy in men with long-term diabetes. The study is published online in PLOS ONE.

Diabetic peripheral neuropathy causes nerves to send out abnormal signals. Patients feel pain, tingling or burning sensation in their toes, feet, legs, hands or arms. Nearly 26 million people in the U.S. have diabetes and about half have some form of neuropathy, according to the American Diabetes Association. 

In previous animal studies, researchers at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit found that sildenafil improved blood supply to the sciatic nerve and relieved symptoms of neuropathy. However, it was not known if this therapeutic effect held true for long-term peripheral neuropathy, because the diabetic mice used in the previous experiments were relatively young - 16 weeks old.

"Generally, young diabetic animals with an early stage of peripheral neuropathy are used to investigate various drug treatments," said Lei Wang, MD, the Henry Ford neuroscientist who led the research. "But patients with diabetes who are enrolled in clinical trials often are older and have advanced peripheral neuropathy.

To mimic clinical trials in which diabetes patients have advanced peripheral neuropathy, Wang and his colleagues chose male mice with type II diabetes that were 36 weeks old, roughly equivalent to middle age in humans.

In one group, 15 diabetic mice were treated with an oral dose of sildenafil/Viagra every day for eight weeks. A control group of 15 age-matched diabetic mice were treated daily with the same amount of saline.

Researchers found after a battery of nerve and function tests on both groups of mice that sildenafil markedly improved sensory function after six weeks of treatment.

“Treatment of diabetic mice at age 36 weeks with sildenafil significantly increased functional blood vessels and regional blood flow in the sciatic nerve,” said Wang. “Functional analysis showed that the sildenafil treatment considerably improved motor and sensory conduction velocities in the sciatic nerve and peripheral thermal stimulus sensitivity compared with the saline treatment.

“These findings provide new insights into mechanisms underlying the neurological dysfunction of long term diabetic peripheral neuropathy and may lead to the development of a sildenafil therapy for long term diabetic peripheral neuropathy.”

Since becoming available in 1998, Viagra has been found to relieve several other conditions beside erectile dysfunction, such as jet lag and altitude sickness. Some professional athletes also believe that Viagra enhances their performance by opening their blood vessels and increasing oxygen supply to their muscles.