not necessarily more likely to indulge in risky sexual behaviour

Research done at the University of Florida has concluded that men who use the erectile dysfunction medication Viagra are not necessarily more likely to indulge in risky sexual behaviour. There has been a lot of concern that the increased erectile function that accompanies the use of Viagra allows men who are under the influence of drugs and alcohol to make poor and potentially reckless sexual decisions such as sleeping with many different partners and not using condoms.

Professor Robert Cook, from the University of Florida and who led this research explained that the idea of the study was to see whether when doctors prescribed erectile dysfunction medication they could be contributing to the spread of the AIDS virus. He said that doctors should relax because provided that men obtained Viagra legally with a prescription it tended to be used to responsibly.

This study however did not look at the large numbers of men who buy counterfeit Viagra illegally or those who obtain the real version by deception. Some men are known to use Viagra to specifically counteract the effects of drinking too much and using controlled drug substances and these men tend not to get proper prescriptions and are reckless with their health.

Professor Cook explained that the study was designed to see how erectile dysfunction medication affected the risk taking of the general population rather than specific groups of those people known to get impotence medication without a prescription, who had drug problems and multiple sexual partners of both sexes.

Almost 2,800 men with an average age of 52 took part in the study. Around 50 percent of these men were HIV positive. The results show that around ten percent of men who used erectile dysfunction medications indulged in risky sexual behaviour which was the same percentage for those men who did not use impotence medications.

The full study was published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.