Viagra being tested to treat sick children
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Saturday, July 27, 2002
LONDON -- Some doctors are giving babies and children Viagra in hopes that it might help them fight a rare, life-threatening lung disease.
Large-scale trials haven't been done, and at least one doctor stopped his testing of the impotence drug on children because it didn't seem to work.
But scientists say it is logical to think that Viagra, originally developed as a treatment for the heart ailment angina, might be helpful for pulmonary hypertension. The drug causes blood vessels to expand so that blood flow can improve. Pulmonary hypertension causes blood vessels in the lungs to progressively narrow, eventually causing heart failure.
Dr. Alan Magee, a child cardiologist at the Royal Brompton Hospital in London, said Viagra didn't seem to be effective on the four children he treated, so he stopped his test.
"It made them feel better, but there was no really good objective evidence that it worked," Magee said. "Until the proper trials are done on this, you really can't say anything very much about it one way or the other."
It is not unusual for drugs licensed for one illness to be tried on patients with other conditions, and Viagra is one of several blood vessel expanders being investigated for pulmonary hypertension.
"Doctors don't see it as a sex drug," said Dr. Martin Wilkins, professor of clinical pharmacology at Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine in London. "They think of it as an enzyme inhibitor."
Experts estimate that 1 million to 2 million people suffer from pulmonary hypertension. On average, people live three years after being diagnosed. |
