The Mayo Clinic studied 1,402 men living in in Olmsted County, Minnesota, United States, who did not have heart disease or erectile dysfunction when the study started on January 1, 1996. The men were checked for both urological and sexual problems every two years for a total of ten years. The study ended on December 31, 2005. Each man in the study had a regular sex partner.
The subjects in the study also took part in a Brief Male Sexual Functions Inventory (BMSFI) developed by Harvard Medical School. The questionnaire is used to help identify sexual problems like erectile dysfunction.
The two papers that followed the study have been published in the February 2009 issue of Mayo Clinic Proceedings.
The researchers with the Mayo Clinic study found that 2.4% of the men 40 to 49 had erectile dysfunction. Those odds went up with each decade a man lives; 5.6% had it between the ages of 50 and 59 years; 17.0% between 60 and 69 years; and 38.8% when 70 years and older.
Researchers also discovered that the men with ED in their 40's had a very increased rate of heart disease compared to those without ED. The chances of getting coronary heart disease later was 48.52 per 1,000 men who got ED in their 40s. That compares to those men who got ED later in life. Those men had a risk for heart disease at only 0.94 per 1,000 men when the men did not get ED in their 40s.
The researchers concluded, “ED and CAD may be differing manifestations of a common underlying vascular pathology."
And, "When ED occurs in a younger man, it is associated with a marked increase in the risk of future cardiac events, whereas in older men, ED appears to be of little prognostic importance. Young men with ED may be ideal candidates for cardiovascular risk factor screening and medical intervention.”