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Senior Citizens & Sex
Erectile Dysfunction Drugs May Trump Nitroglycerin
for Heart Protection
Good news for millions of male senior citizens using
sex enhancers
 March 2, 2007 Senior citizens, the predominant
users of erectile dysfunction drugs, will surely be pleased by a new
study that finds these drugs that enhance their sex life are also
protecting their hearts from damage before and after a severe heart
attack. These drugs do an even better job than nitroglycerin, report
Virginia Commonwealth University researchers today.
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During a heart attack, the heart is deprived of
oxygen, which can result in significant damage to heart muscle and
tissue. After the attack, most patients require treatment to reduce and
repair the damage and improve their chances of survival. With the
exception of early reperfusion (restoration of blood flow), which
minimizes the heart muscle damage and preserves the pumping function,
there are no available therapies that are truly effective in protecting
or repairing such damage clinically.
Rakesh C. Kukreja, Ph.D., professor of medicine and
Eric Lipman Chair of Cardiology at VCU, and colleagues compared
nitroglycerin with two erectile dysfunction drugs -- Viagra, generically
known as sildenafil, and Levitra, generically known as vardenafil -- to
determine the effectiveness of each for heart protection following a
heart attack.
Nitroglycerin is a drug used to treat angina, or
chest pain. It is a vasodilator and opens blood vessels in order to
improve the flow of blood to a patient's heart.
The research team reported that in an animal model,
sildenafil and vardenafil reduce damage in the heart muscle when given
after a severe heart attack.
In contrast, nitroglycerin failed to reduce the
damage in the heart when administered under similar conditions. The
findings were published in the February issue of the Journal of
Molecular and Cellular Cardiology, the official publication of the
International Society for Heart Research.
"Erectile dysfunction drugs can prevent damage in
the heart not only when given before a heart attack, as we discovered
previously, but also lessen the injury after the heart attack," said
Kukreja, who is the lead author of the study.
According to Kukreja, the protective effects on the
heart produced by these erectile dysfunction drugs may be potentially
useful as adjunct therapy in patients undergoing elective procedures,
including coronaryartery bypass graft, coronary angioplasty or heart
transplantation.
In addition, he said another potential application
could be to prevent the multiple organ damage that occurs following
cardiac arrest, resuscitation or shock.
"Preserving heart function is critical to optimal
cardiac outcomes," said George W. Vetrovec, M.D., chair of cardiology at
the VCU Pauley Heart Center. "These agents have significant potential to
enhance patient outcomes, particularly in high risk circumstances, such
as acute heart attacks."
For several years, Kukreja and his colleagues have
studied a class of erectile dysfunction drugs known as
phosphodiesterase-5 inhibitors as part of ongoing research into heart
protection. The team first investigated sildenafil, and then vardenafil,
and found that both compounds were protective when given before a heart
attack under experimental conditions.
Editor's Notes:
This work was supported by grants from the
National Institutes of Health, Pfizer Inc., and Bayer Healthcare AG.
Kukreja collaborated with VCU researchers Fadi N.
Salloum, Ph.D., Ramzi A. Ockaili, Ph.D., Vladimir P. Daoud, Ph.D., and
Eric Chou, Ph.D; and Yuko Takenoshita, Ph.D., and Kazu-ichi Yoshida,
Ph.D., with the Department of Anesthesiology at Kanagawa Dental College
in Japan.
The Journal of Molecular and Cellular Cardiology
is published by Elsevier Publishing.
About VCU and the VCU Medical Center:
Virginia Commonwealth University is the largest university in Virginia
and ranks among the top 100 universities in the country in sponsored
research. Located on two downtown campuses in Richmond, VCU enrolls more
than 30,000 students in nearly 200 certificate and degree programs in
the arts, sciences and humanities. Sixty-three of the programs are
unique in Virginia, many of them crossing the disciplines of VCUs 15
schools and one college. MCV Hospitals and the health sciences schools
of Virginia Commonwealth University compose the VCU Medical Center, one
of the nations leading academic medical centers. For more, see
www.vcu.edu.
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