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Biotech / Medical : VVUS: VIVUS INC. (NASDAQ) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: BigKNY3 who wrote (5725)	3/1/1998 9:44:00 PM
From: Tunica Albuginea	Respond to of 23519

BigKNY#3, I skipped over the article (FORTUNE) quickly. It seemed to be a good narrative of the events as they developed in the ED stocks. Thus definite in that way. Less so from a medical viewpoint. I just assumed folks would not get their medical facts from Fortune. Their rendition of Vivus was admittedly short. Overall however it was a much better article than the comparisons I have for it: Barons, Business week, Newsweek. It shows for example how a pill can be given to millions of people who are presumed impotent when in fact they are just having a hard time having sex with their wife cause they don't get along: that is not impotence. But if you can successfully market it, have the FDA wink at it, then a busy doc will be more than happy to give it to you so that he/she can get on with seeing the other 30 patients. I saw your quote as PDE5 pertains to Nitric Oxide in the penis. The mistake that you (and others would be analysts of medical literature) are making and which Gene Voss and MissLil tried unsuccessfully to point out to you is that you have to put the whole thing in context. Viagra will act SYSTEMICALLY. From my brief (30 min) overview of the book, I am concerned that -in the PDE5 (Viagra) section, over 80 references go back to 1974; most to 1990.Ergo these drugs have been studied at least 15-20 years. -Nowhere are the current Sildenafill authors to be found. -Nowhere in all the book ( over 1000 references) have I seen CURRENT or PREVIOUS work by the PFE researchers.This is the who's who in PDE pharmacology.Yet here is a company about o launch a 4 bill?! dollar drug on 50 mill Americans and their researchers and/or have not been recognized as tops by the editors of this book to include them> Question arises, how good is that work/research? -the book clearly states that PDE5 affects not only penile function but also that of smooth muscle which is on ALL their body; Affects in particular ANF ( Atrial Natriuretic Factor ) which is a chemical made by the body ( R Atrium ) with profound diuretic activity .Where is the work that shows that Sildenafil?Viagra has no effect on ANF? -the book says that PDE5 was originally described/identified in the lung, aorta and platelets.Where is the work by PFE or others showing that Sildenafil does not have any deleterious long term side effects on these organs? -the book cautions the use of tissue extracts from mice to extrapolate PDE activity on humans and says that just because a drug does not show an effect of a pde inhibitor such as Viagra on a tissue ( such as the retina ), it does not mean that in vivo there isn't such an effect because a) most tissues have multiple PDEs b) we are not sure of all the in vivo effects of PDEs . Where is the work on Viagra that shows that it does not have an effect on increasing cyclicGMP in the retina ( like in the penis ) so that we don't have to fear about effects on the eye? - a portion of the chapter on PDE6 ( retina ) goes repeatedly into how its inhibition/destruction gives you retinal degeneration. Where is the work by PFE ( or any body ) describing retinal effects of Viagra on mice and humans? - I know your response Big K: wait till the data come out. I know, that's the same thing they told the people who were questioning Redux. Waiting for the data is the same as witiing for Phase Iv, when the real mass expeiment begins. It is not the first time that the FDA or the US Government have allowed for mass administration of a killer drug ( Redux, others and don't forget tobacco ) to be the real experiment. thus Big K, reader beware as they say. At best Viagra will work if you can get it up at least some on your own and then you have to wait a while too. I think that Fortune magazine describes very well how much more hype, politics, self-interest by researchers there is in the ED field than science. Which is nothing new. Pill -Swallower again, beware. TA