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Biotech / Medical : PFE (Pfizer) How high will it go? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sonki who wrote (1879)	4/30/1998 9:05:00 PM
From: Anthony Wong	Respond to of 9523

Viagra Might Work for Women APRIL 30, 16:56 EDT By JOHN HENDREN AP Business Writer NEW YORK (AP) -- For nearly a month a new impotence pill has helped hundreds of thousands of American men satisfy long-frustrated libidos. Now it may be women's turn. Baltimore hairdresser Laurie Kline tried the new Pfizer drug for men, Viagra, and said she had her first orgasm since her hysterectomy five years ago. As unprecedented demand makes Viagra one of the best-selling drugs on pharmacy shelves, a Boston University study is examining whether the drug might restore lost sex lives for women. Mrs. Kline took one Viagra pill on Wednesday. By Thursday, she was sold. ''It was really wonderful,'' she said. ''It was like it used to be -- maybe even a little bit better. It seemed like my body was back to what it used to be.'' The drug's manufacturer, New York-based Pfizer Inc., is doing early tests of Viagra involving 500 women in England. The potency pill has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration only for men, although doctors are free to prescribe as long as they believe there's a medical reason. But Pfizer isn't pitching Viagra for women. ''We're only recommending it be taken by men,'' Pfizer spokesman Andy McCormick said. We spent four or five years and probably tested about 4,500 men to get the FDA approval on safety and efficacy, so in men we know it's safe and effective. We don't have that knowledge on the drug for women.'' Mrs. Kline's doctor, University of Maryland urologist Jennifer R. Berman, was recently awarded an $88,000 grant from the American Foundation for Urologic Diseases to study the effect of Viagra and other drugs on women's sexual dysfunction, the first such grant. Already women are beginning to seek treatment. ''If it's something that's going to help me the way I need it to help me, I'll take the risk,'' said Robin Lyles, a 39-year-old Germantown, Md., resident who noticed her sexual performance decline markedly after her hysterectomy in June. ''I want to be a sort of guinea pig.'' Ms. Berman's study and other research may help women who have felt neglected in medical research, where researchers once performed most studies on men alone. ''I was told it wasn't a medical problem. Three different gynecologists told me it was in my head,'' said Mrs. Kline, 39. ''I was surprised at how strong the belief was that the problem wasn't physical.'' One reason doctors sometimes assume a woman's sexual problems are psychological is that researchers don't understand women's sexual anatomy as well as they do men's, said Dr. Irwin Goldstein, a Boston University urologist who has studied sexual dysfunction in women. ''The field of female sexual dysfunction is, in a sense, several years behind male sexual dysfunction,'' Goldstein said. ''There are enormous numbers of women -- probably equal to that of men -- who have sexual health problems.'' Just as prostate surgery and diabetes can lead to impotence in men, researchers believe that hysterectomies and high cholesterol and age can interfere with blood flow in women, giving them a numb sensation during sex and making it hard for them to be stimulated. In men, Viagra, known chemically as sildenafil, acts on an enzyme that's prevalent in the penis to boost blood flow. Researchers believe it also boosts blood flow to the vagina, increasing a woman's lubrication and sensitivity to sexual stimulation. Goldstein began studying the effect of Viagra on women while surveying the female partners of impotent men. The survey found that more than half of the women said they, too, had sexual performance problems. Goldstein said he's now working with seven drug makers to research impotence in men. In the next year, he expects many of them to examine whether the drugs work in women. Viagra sales for men alone could top $3 billion by 2002, according to Deutsche Morgan Grenfell analyst Mariola Haggar. With Pfizer's drug accounting for nearly 95 percent of impotence drug sales and expanding the market sixfold in its first month, Eli Lilly & Co. and other drug makers are moving quickly to get their own impotence drugs on the market. Lilly said Thursday it is looking to market a drug for impotence either alone or with a partner. Texas drug maker Zonagen hopes to have an impotence pill on the market by the end of the year. Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. is seeking to create new impotence drugs from scratch and examining whether existing drugs might work with impotence. Viagra started out as a failed heart drug that Pfizer developed after some heart patients unexpectedly reported erections.