Viagra Research With Pulmonary Fibrosis
Written by Stuart Stevens | Tuesday, 13 March 2007 | There are 0 comments
They improved their distances by on average about 20 percent...
You will have all seen a number of articles on the Ukmedix News website showing that the use of sildenafil citrate or Viagra as it is commonly known can really help men and women who suffer from pulmonary arterial hypertension. This rare but terrible disease happens when the arteries between the heart and the lungs are constricted. When researchers realised that the impotence drug Viagra could open the penile artery they reckoned that it could be beneficial in many other applications. Today it is possible to buy sildenafil in a different form called Revatio which is purely for people who suffer from pulmonary arterial hypertension.
From some recent research done at the University of California which is based in Los Angeles scientists now believe that the use of Viagra can also be applied to patients who suffer from another disease called idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. Many of these people also suffer from pulmonary arterial hypertension.
In this new study fourteen patients who suffer from idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis were asked to walk for six minutes as fast as they could and the distances were recorded. They were then given regular doses of the Viagra drug over a time window of three months. They were given between 20mg and 50mg throughout the study.
At the end of the study the men and women were asked to walk for six minutes again and the distances again recorded. This time of the fourteen patients nine of them actually improved the distance that they could walk in the six minutes considerably. Two patients had worse results and of the fourteen only eleven actually completed both of the tests.
All in all the researchers said that 57 percent of the patients who suffered from the idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis and who then were given Viagra improved the distances that they could walk in the set time. It was also recorded that for those people who did respond positively to the Viagra that they improved their distances by on average about 20 percent.
Between 1/3 and ½ of people who have idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis also suffer from pulmonary arterial hypertension, but in this study all the people involved suffered from PAH.
