Hearing Loss And Viagra Link Examined

The research was inconclusive

Research has been released by the University of Alabama at Birmingham which examines the possible connection between hearing loss and the use of the impotence drug Viagra. The research which was published by the Archives of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery was inconclusive about whether Viagra and its cousin’s Cialis and Levitra could cause long term hearing loss but the lead author Professor Gerald McGwin did say that the existing warnings on the labeling of erectile dysfunction medications regarding hearing loss were “warranted.”

Professor McGwin said that while there were “limitations to this study” he said that it would be prudent for men to know about the possible connection between hearing impairment and PDE-5 Inhibitors so that should they start to suffer from hearing problems they could get immediate medical care and therefore also prevent further damage.

For his research Professor McGwin looked at medical information on over 11,500 men over the age of 40 which had previously been collected by the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey. The data showed that between the years 2003 and 2006 those men who said that they used Viagra, Cialis or Levitra were two times more likely to also say that they suffered from hearing loss when compared to those men who had not used impotence drugs.

A number of things need to be taken into consideration before jumping to conclusions. Firstly it is very possible that those men suffering from hearing loss did so because of other health conditions and because of general ageing both of which makes them more likely to use erectile dysfunction drugs in the first place. It could be therefore that the deafness is in no way correlated with the use of Viagra, Cialis or Levitra and Professor McGwin confirmed this and said that more studies needed to be done.

Professor McGwin also noted that erectile dysfunction medications worked by boosting blood flow to certain tissues in parts of the body and that there was a hypothesis that it could do the same to similar tissues found in the ear which in turn could “potentially cause damage”. This is however only a hypothesis and has not been confirmed.