Sexual vitality gets a boost from a potent little pill
Rita Rubin
12/29/98
USA Today
FINAL
Page 06D
Viagra grabbed the biggest medical science headlines in 1998, a year in which genetics led to important breakthroughs and major drug companies got into the dietary supplement business. A review of health news highlights:
Not many new drugs end up as fodder for Saturday Night Live, but it was that kind of year for Viagra .
Since its approval in late March, the tiny baby-blue, diamond-shaped pill has brought impotence out of the bedroom and onto network TV, newspaper front pages and a variety of Web sites.
By October's end, Pfizer Inc. had racked up nearly half a billion dollars in Viagra sales, with more than 6 million prescriptions written, according to IMS Health, a health-care information company.
The first pill ever for the treatment of impotence, Viagra works by enhancing the effect of nitric oxide, the compound that relaxes the spongy tissue in the penis, allowing blood to flow in.
Men who hadn't sought medical care in years flooded doctors' offices in search of the new wonder drug. Or, from the comfort of home, they obtained the impotence pill through Viagra prescription-writing mills on the Internet.
Women, wondering whether Viagra could work similar wonders on their sexual response, popped their partners' pills. They proceeded at their own risk -- large clinical trials of the drug had included only men, and studies of women were in their infancy.
Meanwhile, Viagra launched a national discussion about the differences between sex and romance, intercourse and foreplay. The drug doesn't work like a simple "on" switch. Users still need to be aroused to get an erection. And that usually requires a ready and willing partner.
While Viagra may have brought some couples closer together, it split at least one couple. In June, Roberta Burke, 61, sued her longtime companion, Francis Bernardo, 70, in Mineola, N.Y., claiming that he left her two days after Viagra enabled them to have sex for the first time in four years.
Bernardo left a note boasting of his newfound prowess, according to wire reports.
Infidelity isn't Viagra 's only potential side effect. The main group advised not to use the drug when it was approved were men on nitroglycerin or other drugs containing organic nitrates, which could cause dangerously low blood pressure when combined with Viagra . By mid-November, 130 U.S. patients had died after having been prescribed Viagra .
While the cause of death wasn't known for 48 of them, 77 died of cardiovascular problems, mainly heart attacks. Only 16 of the men were known to have taken medication containing nitrates.
That prompted the Food and Drug Administration and Pfizer Inc., the manufacturer, to add more warnings to Viagra 's label. For example, the label now advises that Viagra generally shouldn't be used by men whose hearts might not be able to withstand their renewed virility.
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