How Viagra can help prevent some cancers

There’s an added benefit in medicines designed to help erectile dysfunction: a reduced risk of colorectal cancers.

Dr. Darren Browning, director of the graduate program in Biochemistry and Cancer Biology at the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University and a cancer researcher at the Georgia Cancer Center, hopes to continue the research into how a low daily dose of Viagra could prevent the formation of polyps in a clinical trial.

“When we give Viagra, we shrink the whole proliferating compartment,” said Browning. “Proliferating cells are more subject to mutations that cause cancer.”