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New use for Viagra: curing hypertension
6 August 2004
GIESSEN - The remedy for male impotence Viagra may also offer hope to sufferers from pulmonary hypertension, a disease that affects up to 10 percent of the population and is regarded as incurable, according to German researchers.
The team took sildenafil, the active agent in Viagra, up Mount Everest, the world's highest mountain, and gave it to 14 young mountaineers. They found it reduced high blood pressure in the arteries that supply the lungs and improved oxygen transport.
Normally pulmonary hypertension (PHT) sufferers must avoid high altitudes as well as strenuous activity.
Friedrich Grimminger, who led the study by the University of Giessen, said sildenafil could improve the quality of life significantly. The research was published Thursday in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
The effect is based on a biochemical similarity between the penis and the lungs: both contain large amounts of the enzyme phosphodiesterase. It limits erection of the male organ and constricts the blood vessels around the lungs.
Sildenafil in turn blocks the enzyme, thus permitting a sustained erection as well as better circulation in the lung walls, according to the study.
Professor Grimminger stressed that the drug would not receive regulatory approval as a treatment for PHT until worldwide tests had been completed.
Healthy young mountaineers were chosen for the test last year, because their lungs undergo rapid change in a matter of weeks when they spend time at high altitude. Giessen doctor Ardeschir Ghofrani, who took part in the study, said the drug reduced PHT without causing a dangerous reduction in blood pressure elsewhere.
PHT patients suffer from breathlessness and strain their hearts when doing anything strenuous. Heart failure can be the result if the condition is not diagnosed. Current therapies are risky because they reduce general blood pressure, which sometimes leads to circulatory collapse. source :-http://www.expatica.com | 
