Viagra offers help to some women

Last update: July 22, 2008 - 8:39 PM

Viagra's effect in women has been disappointing, but those on antidepressants may benefit from taking it. The research involving 98 premenopausal women found Viagra helped with orgasm. But the benefits did not extend to other aspects of sex such as desire, researchers report in today's Journal of the American Medical Association.

Antidepressants can interfere with sex drive and performance even as the drugs help lift depression. Switching drugs or reducing the dose can help. But many men and women stop taking them because of their sexual side effects. The antidepressants increase the chemical serotonin in the brain. Serotonin is thought to slow orgasm, perhaps by diminishing the release of another brain chemical, dopamine. Viagra increases blood flow to sex organs.

PROMISING TREATMENT FOR PROSTATE CANCER

An experimental cancer drug shrank prostate tumors dramatically and more than doubled survival in 70 to 80 percent of patients with aggressive cancers, British researchers said Tuesday.

Although the study published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology covered only 21 patients, the drug is being tested in more than 250 men with what appears to be similar results, experts said.

Experts expect the new drug, called abiraterone, to be widely available by 2011. It could find use among most of the 28,000 U.S. men who have the most aggressive type of prostate cancer diagnosed each year.

ONE EXTRAORDINARY HEART-PUMP RESULT

When it comes to hearts, Taneal Wilson won the lottery. A small pump implanted to keep the 31-year-old alive long enough for a heart transplant somehow helped his ravaged heart completely recover instead.

Only a lucky few are ever weaned off those implants, their rested hearts able to work on their own again. How to duplicate those successes is one of cardiology's biggest questions.

Doctors have begun pairing heart pumps with high doses of cardiac medication in hopes that more aggressive therapy will shrink flabby enlarged hearts enough to avoid a transplant, or at least enable patients to survive longer without one. An experimental steroid-like drug is also being tested on pump recipients that might spur heart muscle to rebuild.

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