Viagra effectiveness for women still unknown.
Viagra effectiveness for women still unknown.
May 24, 2000 (San Francisco) -- Don't expect to see Elizabeth Dole in an ad for Viagra. Once again, when the miracle drug was tested in women with sexual dysfunction it failed the test proving, according to some critics, that what is good for the gander will never fly in the goose.
Nonetheless, Pfizer Pharmaceuticals, the maker of the drug, is not throwing in the towel. Pfizer tells WebMD that it is forging ahead with a new study that will test the drug in postmenopausal women on hormone replacement therapy whose main complaint is the inability to become sexually aroused.
Michael T. Sweeney, MD, medical director of the Viagra team at Pfizer, tells WebMD that the new study is recruiting 150 women who will either receive a sugar pill or one of three Viagra doses: 10 mg, 50 mg, or 100 mg.
But Viagra has had some success among women, because if the mass media is any indication, sexual dysfunction in women is news and much of the credit for that goes to Viagra, the drug that made it possible to take sexual dysfunction public. With the remarkable success of Viagra for men with impotence, researchers hoped that the drug could do the same for women.
But once again, gender makes a difference, says Rosemary Basson, MBBS, MRCP. Basson was lead researcher of a Canadian and European study of almost 600 women with sexual dysfunction disorders.
In this latest study, released at a meeting of obstetricians and gynecologists here this week, the placebo performed better than Viagra regardless of the dose. Additionally, more than a third of women taking higher doses of Viagra -- 50 mg and 100 mg -- reported side effects, such as headache and flushing. Basson says that "is much higher than the rate in men, which is only about 14% or 15%." She is associate professor in both obstetrics and psychiatry at the University of British Columbia and Vancouver Hospital.
Basson, who says she has been treating sexual dysfunction in women for decades, says it is difficult to determine if Viagra will ever have a therapeutic role for women. "Among women, sexual dysfunction is not so easily divided into different areas as it is with men. In women, it is more of a continuum in which women may have low desire, female sexual arousal disorder, or female orgasmic disorder. It is not such a simple thing as blood supply," she says.
Jury Still Out on Effectiveness of Viagra for Women
May 24, 2000 (San Francisco) -- Don't expect to see Elizabeth Dole in an ad for Viagra. Once again, when the miracle drug was tested in women with sexual dysfunction it failed the test proving, according to some critics, that what is good for the gander will never fly in the goose.
Nonetheless, Pfizer Pharmaceuticals, the maker of the drug, is not throwing in the towel. Pfizer tells WebMD that it is forging ahead with a new study that will test the drug in postmenopausal women on hormone replacement therapy whose main complaint is the inability to become sexually aroused.
Michael T. Sweeney, MD, medical director of the Viagra team at Pfizer, tells WebMD that the new study is recruiting 150 women who will either receive a sugar pill or one of three Viagra doses: 10 mg, 50 mg, or 100 mg.
But Viagra has had some success among women, because if the mass media is any indication, sexual dysfunction in women is news and much of the credit for that goes to Viagra, the drug that made it possible to take sexual dysfunction public. With the remarkable success of Viagra for men with impotence, researchers hoped that the drug could do the same for women.
But once again, gender makes a difference, says Rosemary Basson, MBBS, MRCP. Basson was lead researcher of a Canadian and European study of almost 600 women with sexual dysfunction disorders.
In this latest study, released at a meeting of obstetricians and gynecologists here this week, the placebo performed better than Viagra regardless of the dose. Additionally, more than a third of women taking higher doses of Viagra -- 50 mg and 100 mg -- reported side effects, such as headache and flushing. Basson says that "is much higher than the rate in men, which is only about 14% or 15%." She is associate professor in both obstetrics and psychiatry at the University of British Columbia and Vancouver Hospital.
Basson, who says she has been treating sexual dysfunction in women for decades, says it is difficult to determine if Viagra will ever have a therapeutic role for women. "Among women, sexual dysfunction is not so easily divided into different areas as it is with men. In women, it is more of a continuum in which women may have low desire, female sexual arousal disorder, or female orgasmic disorder. It is not such a simple thing as blood supply," she says.
