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Babies Who Take Viagra
October 19, 2006
Bailey Buffalow was 18 months old before she laughed for the first
time. Born three months premature, Bailey suffers from pulmonary
hypertension, a rare condition in which the artery carrying blood
from the heart to the lungs becomes constricted. A scan showed that
the right side of her tiny heart had swollen to almost twice its
normal size as it struggled to pump enough blood through the narrowing
blood vessel. Even the slightest exertion—such as laughter—was
too much for her. Left untreated, she would die. "I asked the
doctor several times, 'Am I being inhumane to keep her alive?' "
says Bailey's mother, Micah, a 23-year-old legal secretary from
Albuquerque, N.M. Bailey's doctors were initially optimistic, but
conventional treatments had little effect. Finally, they suggested
an experimental treatment: Viagra.
"I said, 'You've got to be kidding'," Micah recalls.
"Viagra, for Pete's sake—you wouldn't
think of that for a little girl for any amount of reasons."
But with no other option, Micah agreed, and three times a day gave
Bailey a cherry-flavored syrup containing ground-up Viagra tablets.
Almost immediately, Bailey's blood pressure and heart rate began
to drop, and just days after beginning the treatment she laughed
for the first time. Within months, the pressure in Bailey's pulmonary
artery had dropped almost to normal, and her swollen heart had begun
to shrink. Bailey's health will always be fragile, but if she remains
stable she could be off meds in a year or so. It's hard to tell
there was ever anything wrong with Bailey, now 3 years old, as she
runs about playing—and laughing—with her friends, Micah
says. "She couldn't sit still if her life depended on it."
The drug that's put a spring in the step of 16 million American
men since its introduction in 1998 as a treatment for erectile dysfunction
is itself finding new life as a therapy for the very young. In May,
the most comprehensive study yet of Viagra therapy for kids with
pulmonary hypertension found that after a year of treatment, the
children could walk four times farther before becoming exhausted.
All 14 children who participated were alive at the end of the Toronto
study—unusual for a disease that normally has a 12-month mortality
rate of 37 percent. Pfizer, Viagra's maker, is recruiting patients
for a large-scale trial as a first step toward marketing the drug
for infant use.
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com
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