Viagra for Your Heart?
Reported July 31, 2006
BALTIMORE (Ivanhoe Broadcast News) — It’s the little blue pill we all know about. Viagra, the drug famous for helping improve men’s sex lives, might actually be able to save lives, too.
Johns Hopkins researchers have discovered Viagra may be effective in treating heart disease, too. Billie Marie Evans hopes so. For 49 years of marriage, she took care of the housework. Now that she has congestive heart failure, her husband does most of it.
“I depend on him for a lot,” she says. “It makes me feel bad in a way.”
Billie Marie took part in a study at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Doctors followed her and healthy patients to determine the effects of Viagra.
“It’s an unusual new discovery initially coming out of left field,” cardiologist David Kass, M.D., the Abraham and Virginia Weiss Professor of Cardiology at Johns Hopkins, tells Ivanhoe.
He and colleagues found the enzyme that Viagra blocks helps reduce the effects of stress on the heart, meaning it makes the heart healthier.
Dr. Kass says, “If you push your foot on the accelerator pedal without Viagra, you’re suddenly going 100 miles per hour. With Viagra, you’re only able to go 35 an hour. So, it’s blocking the adrenaline stress on the heart.”
Tests in mice showed dramatic results. Hearts that were enlarged by stress stayed the normal size when Viagra was used. The first round of tests on healthy patients also showed promise. Viagra reduced stress on their hearts by half.
Because Viagra is an approved drug, if the results hold up it could be standard treatment in just a few years. That’s good news for the millions like Billie Marie who are anxious for help.
“If that would help, yeah I’m willing to try it,” she says — even if it does comes from the unlikely source.
In this context, Viagra can be used by men and women. Doctors say it doesn’t cause sexual stimulation if you’re not in a romantic environment.
If you would like more information, please contact:
David March
Assistant Director
Public Relations and Media Affairs
John Hopkins Medicine
901 South Bond Street Ste 550
Baltimore, MD 21231
(410) 955-1534
dmarch1@jhmi.edu