soon the rabbits had fully restored sexual function.

New hope for men suffering from severe erectile dysfunction could be on its way after a new study done with rabbits produced impressive results. The researchers who experimented on a group of rabbits who had damaged penises used specially grown laboratory penile tissue which was then surgically implanted into them. Incredibly it was seen that within a month new blood vessel structures started to grow and soon the rabbits had fully restored sexual function.

The researchers got the previously sexually impotent male rabbits to meet up with 12 female rabbits and four of them ended up pregnant proving the effectiveness of the treatment. Dr. Anthony Atala who led the research and who is the director of the Institute for Regenerative Medicine based at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center explained that this research could lead to further applications for humans. It would be especially useful for men who suffered from traumatic penile injuries, penile cancer or severe cases of erectile dysfunction which don’t respond to the normal drugs Viagra, Cialis and Levitra.

It really does seem likely over the next ten years that men will be able to have operations to have artificial penile tissue inserted into their penises which would make them stronger and more effective. It could even possibly be used for penis enlargement therapy too. Professor Andrew McCullough from the NYU Langone Medical Center said that it usually takes ten years “from discovery to FDA approval”.

Professor McCullough also spoke about how research in this area could lead to other discoveries for tissue regeneration for other organs in the body. Maybe in the future this organ regeneration treatment could also be used to treat women suffering from female sexual dysfunction as well as for both men and women with internal organ damage. The research was published in full by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.