In some ways, this should not be surprising. Men who seek out help for erectile dysfunction clearly consider sex to be an important part of their lives. More sex, particularly in older age groups who may be less consistent about condom use, means more risk for STDs - at least when that sex is outside of the context of a mutually monogamous long term relationship. Still, the level of difference in risk was extraordinary. In the year before Viagra was prescribed, the men who would end up taking it had 2.8 times the odds of being diagnosed with an STD than non-using age matched controls. That increase in the odds of an STD diagnosis remained high after they went on the drugs - although it decreased to 2.65. Much of the difference in risk was due to significantly higher rates of HIV in the Viagra group - this is not a trivial problem.
What's the take home message here? Not, as many people would have you think, that Viagra makes men take risks. The study, in fact, found that men's STD risk did not change from the year before they started taking the drug to the year after. Instead, the most important result of this particular study seems to be that higher risk men may be more likely to seek Viagra in the first place - and that these men may represent an important target for STD screening. The rates of STDs in older populations, even in the elderly, have continued to increase - in part because neither they nor their doctors see older individuals as being at risk. Maybe erectile dysfunction drugs represent an important opportunity to change that. By reminding physicians that older men and women have sex, it might encourage them to spend more time focusing on their patient's sexual health.
