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 Researchers focused on seven risk factors for heart disease: high
blood pressure, elevated cholesterol, high blood sugar, being
overweight or obese, insufficient physical activity, poor diet, and
smoking. They followed 1,136 men for a decade starting in their
early 60s to see how having more of these risk factors, or poor
cardiovascular health, influenced the odds of developing erectile
dysfunction.
“We knew that erectile dysfunction was considered an early indicator
of vascular disease that might occur before heart disease was
diagnosed by a doctor,” said lead study author Abbi Lane-Cordova, a
preventive medicine researcher at Northwestern University in
Chicago.
“This study showed that men who were less likely to have risk
factors for heart disease and had healthier behaviors (non-smoking,
physically active, healthier diet) were also less likely to have
erectile dysfunction later in life,” Lane-Cordova said by email.
“Men may avoid erectile dysfunction the same way they may avoid
heart disease.”
Ischemic heart disease, or hardening of the arteries, is often
associated with erectile dysfunction in men over 60. The condition
can reduce circulation in the penis.
At the start of the study, researchers scored men on each of the
seven different risk factors for heart disease, awarding 0 points
for the worst outcome, 1 point for intermediate or moderate risk,
and 2 points for the healthiest outcome. In other words, men with
the lowest cumulative risk across all seven measures would be
awarded a total of 14 points.
Then, researchers sorted participants into three groups from lowest
to highest risk for cardiovascular disease.
By the end of the study, 526 men, or 46 percent, had erectile
dysfunction.
But all of the men with the highest cardiovascular disease risk had
erectile dysfunction, compared with just 15 percent of men with the
lowest risk for cardiovascular disease.
The men who had erectile dysfunction by the end of the study were
also more likely to have poor blood flow through their arteries at
the start of the study.
The study wasn’t a controlled experiment designed to prove that risk
factors for heart disease directly cause erectile dysfunction.
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Another limitation of the study is that researchers only measured
erectile function once, making it impossible to assess how changes
in cardiovascular risk factors over time might influence sexual
function, the authors note in the American Journal of Hypertension.
Even so, the findings add to a large body of evidence linking risk
factors for cardiovascular disease to higher odds of erectile
dysfunction, said Andrew Steptoe, head of the department of
behavioral science and health at University College London in the
U.K.
One theory about how cardiovascular disease influences erectile
dysfunction has been that they lead to poor working of the blood
vessels, in particular dysfunction in the cells that line the
vessels, Steptoe, who wasn’t involved in the study, said by email.
This in turn leads to a disruption of blood flow into the penis,
resulting in erectile dysfunction.
But the current study directly measured the function in this layer
of cells lining the blood vessels, and it didn’t find this accounted
for the impact of cardiovascular risk factors on erectile
dysfunction, so it’s possible other processes may be involved,
Steptoe said.
“The good news is that maintaining good cardiovascular health (not
smoking, being physically active, healthy body weight and diet,
blood pressure in the healthy range) has a favorable effect on
erectile function just as it does on risk of heart disease,” Steptoe
said. “So men who take care of their health are likely to maintain
better sexual function as well as avoiding heart disease.”
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2qdMxaN American Journal of Hypertension,
online April 20, 2017.
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