BALTIMORE (Ivanhoe Newswire) -- More than 30 million men take them
for erectile dysfunction, but the drugs marketed to treat male impotence are
now being investigated for the treatment of more than a dozen diseases and
health problems. Researchers say ED drugs like Viagra could turn out to be
as versatile as aspirin.
They're the images of happy couples that helped make erectile dysfunction
drugs a $3 billion business. But now doctors say those little pills may also
save lives.
Brian Kumnick is fighting throat cancer. He's been through months of
radiation and surgery.
“The radiation, it's barbaric,” Kumnick told Ivnahoe. “It's really barbaric,
and I've lost my taste buds, for example. I can't taste anything. Water
tastes like acid going down."
He's part of a clinical trial to see if the ED drug Cialis can cure head and
neck cancers.
"It'd be really nice to just take a pill that has a pleasant side effect,”
Kumnick said.
In preliminary studies, doctors at Johns Hopkins say Cialis energized
patients' immune systems so their bodies could battle the cancer cells.
Next, they'll test to see if the drug also shrinks tumors.
"When we looked at the blood of head and neck cancer patients, we could get
their immune response to rev up to near normal levels, whereas they were
suppressed maybe 75 percent, sometimes even 80 percent,” Joseph Califano,
M.D., professor in the Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery at
Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Md., told Ivanhoe.
From fighting cancer, to helping hearts and lungs ... doctors have found
another use for Viagra.
Genevieve suffers from pulmonary hypertension -- lack of oxygen causes her
to pass out.
"We just hear heart transplant, lung transplant,” Genevieve’s mother, Sandra
Hernandez, told Ivanhoe. “It was devastating. She's my little girl."
Instead of a transplant, doctors prescribed Viagra in liquid form to open up
Genevieve’s blood vessels.
“I was like, what? They said, ‘Yeah, the Viagra is due right now,’" father
Mike Cooper said.
“Nitric oxide was developed for these types of issues in the lungs, and one
of the byproducts
was, hey, this medication also can dilate blood vessels in other parts of
the body and treat erectile dysfunction,” James Swift, M.D., a pediatric
intensive care physician at Sunrise Children’s Hospital in Las Vegas, Nev.,
told Ivanhoe.
They’re new possibilities for well-known drugs.
"It's very exciting to work with drugs that have already had safety data
documented on them, because they can be very quickly moved into helping
patients,” Dr. Califano said.
Other conditions being assessed for treatment with ED drugs include
diabetes, multiple sclerosis, chronic pelvic pain, strokes and even memory
loss. One study reports that Viagra increased blood flow and improved
glucose processes in the brain, improving learning abilities.
