Viagra News (2005)

Men taking blood pressure drugs can also take Viagra

It has been proved in recent studies and has been experimented on about some 400 people approximately that people who take more than one drug for their blood pressure can also intake the sexual performance enhancing drug-viagra. People on multi drug pattern for their blood pressure were given Viagra and they did not experience any side effect or symptom affecting their heart. Thus, now the people on multi drug pattern can safely rely on Viagra for the enhancement of their sexual prowess without getting worried about its side effects on their heart.

Viagra restores cognitive function in rats after liver failure

A study involving rats reveals the mechanism responsible for learning impairment due to liver failure and shows that sildenafil restores cognitive function.

Liver disease sometimes causes hepatic encephalopathy, which involves brain damage, personality changes, and intellectual impairment due to hyperammonemia (high levels of ammonia in the blood). However, the mechanisms involved in both learning and how liver disease leads to learning impairment are unclear.

In a new study led by Vicente Felipo of the Laboratory of Neurobiology at the Fundacion Valenciana de Investigaciones Biomedicas in Valencia, Spain and published in the February 2005 issue of Hepatology, researchers hypothesized that impaired learning was due to a defect in the glutamate- nitric oxide-cGMP pathway in the brain and that administering sildenafil to increase cGMP would restore learning ability. Sildenafil, commonly known as Viagra, is known to prevent the destruction of cGMP and allow it to accumulate in the body.

"The fact that rats with portacaval anastomosis [shunts] or with hyperammonemia without liver failure show the same alterations in the function of the [glutamate-nitric oxide- cGMP] pathway, extracellular cGMP and learning ability indicates that hyperammonemia, which is the only common alteration in both models, is responsible for the alteration of the function of the pathway and, subsequently, of the impairment of learning ability," the authors state. They note, however, that an excessive increase in cGMP may impair learning and that it must be kept high but below a certain threshold to reach maximum learning ability.

The authors conclude: "Although caution must be taken considering the possible deleterious increase in the existing vasodilatation in liver disease by sildenafil, pharmacological manipulation of cGMP in brain by safe procedures may be a useful treatment to restore cognitive and intellectual functions in patients with overt or minimal hepatic encephalopathy."

Source:News-Medical in Medical Research News