New research has been published on 20th October- 2014 in BMC Medicine shows that Viagra could be used as a safe treatment for heart disease.
In this guest post, lead author on the paper, Andrea M. Isidori of Department of Experimental Medicine at Sapienza University of Rome, tells more about the background to this research and what they found out.
-from internet
Viagra was originally tested for heart problems. In the first decade (1998-2008) after its approval, Viagra revolutionized the sex lives of millions and became one of the most commercially successful drugs in the world, with over 1.8 billion pills used by about 35 million people. The number is still growing.
Biomedcentral Research:
What about cardiology?
Several animal studies have shown that Viagra attenuates cardiac remodeling, with an anti-hypertrophic and anti-fibrotic effect, and protects the heart against different types of injury.
Some small clinical trials have demonstrated that chronic PDE5 inhibition improves cardiac performance and geometry in various clinical conditions, including heart failure, myocardial infarction and diabetic cardiomyopathy.
In the last sixteen years pre-clinical and clinical research into the extra-urological effects of PDE5i has expanded dramatically, revealing previously unsuspected indications for these drugs. Once more, the blue pill could change the quality of life of millions of people.
Andrea M. Isidori
But how?
Biomedcentral Meta-analytic research just published in BMC Medicine originated to clarify some controversies emerging from the available human studies. They Wanted to analyze if chronic PDE5i administration was cardioprotective and safe, and, if so, where the benefits were mainly seen: cardiac muscle, peripheral vessels, or both.
They showed that continuous administration of Viagra improves cardiac performance and has an anti-remodeling effect without a major impact on vascular parameters, suggesting that it does indeed have a direct effect on the heart.
The novelty of this meta-analysis is the identification of subgroups of patients that may benefit more from PDE5i: patients with cardiac hypertrophy and heart failure, and patients developing a maladaptive remodeling to different injuries, in which the cardiac pump no longer works well.
Biomedcentral study is the first to show in a large patient cohort that chronic PDE5i administration improves cardiac output and decreases heart rate.This could result in longer survival, increased exercise tolerance and a better quality of life. Surprisingly, the magnitude of effects was similar to that seen with the drugs currently used to treat these clinical conditions, and was obtained in a relatively brief period (3 to 12 months).
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