Patients at risk of developing diabetes may boost their insulin sensitivity by taking the drug sildenafil that commonly treats erectile dysfunction, according to a press release by Vanderbilt University Medical Centre. The level of circulating glucose has decreased in patients taking the drug, also known as Viagra, and promoted lower risk of diabetes.

The discovery comes from the analysis of the effect of sildenafil in animal models with poor insulin sensitivity. Patients experienced relaxation of smooth muscle, vasodilation and increased blood flow while taking the drug.

Researchers from Vanderbilt University Medical Centre in the U.S. used the erectile dysfunction drug to prevent the function of an enzyme called phosphodiesterase 5 (PDE5). The enzyme was prevented from breaking down a chemical in the body called cyclic GMP. Preventing PDE5 resulted in more relaxed blood vessels, which increased the sensitivity of patients to insulin.

In the study, researchers randomly assigned overweight individuals with prediabetes to take sildenafil or placebo, an inactive drug, over three months. Results show that the patients who received sildenafil were more sensitive to insulin compared with those on placebo.

"Sildenafil and related drugs could offer a potential avenue for addressing the rising number of diabetes diagnoses," Nancy Brown, chair of the Department of Medicine at Vanderbilt, said in the press release. The new study was published in the journal Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism.

According to the International Diabetes Federation’s Diabetes Atlas, an estimated 415 million people or one in 11 adults across the world were diagnosed with diabetes in 2015. In Australia, about 900,000 hospitalisations were reportedly linked to diabetes between 2013 and 2014, while only 30,000 people started taking insulin in 2013, according to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare.

Brown warns that some available medications tend to deliver adverse effects in patients. However, researchers noted that sildenafil or Viagra were not found to reduce an anti-clotting chemical in the body while increasing blood flow.

Further research is required to determine if a long-term treatment with sildenafil could stop the onset of diabetes in high-risk patients.

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