Nifedipine with side effect about sexual dysfunction

Question: Sexual dysfunction is side effect of Nifedipine, yes or not?

Answer: Nifedipine may cause erectile dysfunction, but no incident is reported absolutely.

The drug can affect the muscles around the tube for bringing sperm and affect the muscle around the gland that produce vitreous for sperm. So it may affect releasing of semen through the urethra and may make it more difficult to ejaculate.

However, the questioner should not be worry about it too much. Since Nifedipine is a drug that is useful and necessary for the treatment of hypertension or cardiovascular disease. And Nifedipine is classified as a drug which affect erectile dysfunction in moderate level compared with other antihypertensive drugs.

There are also reports of the incidence of erectile dysfunction in patients with high blood pressure (that is not treated), approximately 17.1%, which is higher than those who did not have high blood pressure approximately 6.9%. So the erectile dysfunction may be partly due to the illness as well.

References:

1. Arksdale JD, Gardner SF. The impact of first-line antihypertensive drugs on erectile dysfunction. Pharmacotherapy 1999; 19 (5): 573-81.

2. Nifedipine. In: DRUGDEX System [database on the internet]. Ann Arbor (MI): Truven Health Analytics; 2013. Available from: www.micromedexsolutions.com.

3. Doumas M, Douma S. The Effect of antihypertensive drugs on erectile function: A proposed management algorithm. J Clin Hypertens. 2006; 8 (5): 359-63.