Concern is growing in the medical community that Viagra may cause melanoma. It may well be that Viagra may have this potentially fatal side effect because of the way the drugs work. Melanoma annually is diagnosed in about 69,000 Americans and causes about 8,650 fatalities.
Lawsuits against Pfizer will argue that the company knew or should have known that these drugs could cause melanoma and should have warned doctors and patients.
The Association Between Melanoma and Viagra
Viagra is… well you know what Viagra is. It is one of the most well-known and prescribed drugs in human history. A stunning 27 million men have used Viagra, mostly for penile erectile dysfunction (“ED”). It has, of course, made countless billions for Pfizer.
There is a real fear now that these blue pills may cause melanoma, an often deadly cancer. A new study that appears in JAMA Internal Medicine titled “Sildenafil Use and Increased Risk of Incident Melanoma in US Men, A Prospective Cohort Study” reports that the use of Viagra may increase the risk of melanoma or skin cancer by as much as 84%.
This was not some small study. The data that researchers used was of 26,000 men who were tracked the men since 2000 regarding their sexual health and how often they used Viagra. They also looked at something else: genetic skin cancer and sun exposure. Why is this important? Because it might be that men who take Viagra also happen to be the same sort of men that spend a lot of time in the sun. Alternatively, you also want to make sure there is not a link between erectile dysfunction and melanoma. The key is determining whether this connection between Viagra and melanoma is an association or whether there is direct causation, i.e. Viagra causes melanoma.
Findings from this Study
There are a number of things this study tells us:
- The study showed an increased risk in melanoma not only in Viagra patients but for men using Revatio, another Pfizer drug that is pharmacologically the same as Viagra but is used to treat pulmonary arterial hypertension. Are tadalafil (Cialis) and vardenafil (Levitra) – two other big selling ED drugs – also associated with melanoma? There has been no study. But it is reasonable to suspect the possibility that the entire class of drugs increases the risk of melanoma.
- Physicians need to be on extra alert for melanoma in patients taking Viagra. Early detection is key.
- You don’t want to start taking or stop taking a medication based on something you read from a plaintiffs’ lawyer’s website. That said, it would be wise to be talking to your prescribing doctor about this new study if you are taking not only Viagra but any drugs in this class, particularly if you are at high risk for melanoma.