Drug dysfunction erectile medication daily news.

June 13, 2005 — Viagra may be famous for helping men in the bedroom, but a
new study shows it may also help children with a rare and often fatal lung
disease.

Researchers found the active ingredient in Viagra, , helped
children with pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) walk farther and breathe
easier when taken over the course of a year.

Pulmonary arterial hypertension occurs when blood pressure in the arteries
that supply blood to the lungs becomes dangerously high and causes symptoms
including fatigue, dizziness, shortness of breath, and eventually heart failure
and death.

“Untreated, children usually die within one year of diagnosis,” says
researcher Ian Adatia, associate professor of pediatrics at the University of
California San Francisco Children’s Hospital, in a news release. He says that
even with the best available treatment few people live five years after the
disease is diagnosed.

But the small, pilot study showed that sildenafil provided
benefits for children with the lung condition with fewer side effects than
existing treatments.

Earlier this month, the FDA approved sildenafil for the treatment of PAH
under the brand name Revatio.

Sildenafil Eases Lung Disease

In the study, which appears in the current issue of Circulation: Journal
of the American Heart Association, looked at the effects of
sildenafil in a group of 14 children with symptomatic pulmonary arterial
hypertension.

The children received varying doses of the drug along with other drugs as
needed, such as blood thinners. After one year of treatment, the results showed
that the children were able to walk farther than typically seen with other
drugs used to treat PAH.

For example, the average distance walked in six minutes, a standard measure
of PAH severity, increased by 154 meters or more than one and a half football
fields.

Researchers say sildenafil appears to help pulmonary hypertension by
relaxing the smooth muscle of blood vessels and increasing blood flow. That
effect resulted in a 20% drop in in the pulmonary arteries and
improved breathing for these children.

“Very importantly, the side effects were minimal, the drug was very easy
to take, and there were no changes in liver or kidney function that can happen
with other drugs used to treat PAH,” says Adatia.

But researchers stress that this was a very small study and more research is
needed to determine the long-term effects of sildenafil in people with the lung
disease.

Pfizer, which makes Viagra, funded the study. Pfizer is a WebMD sponsor.