#ORJINAL VIAGRA TRIAL#
Recently, a large-scale clinical trial found that canakinumab (Ilaris) a drug used to treat one form of arthritis made by Novartis, could also be used to treat heart disease after researchers understood that inflammation may play a role in the latter. Occasionally, this means scientists will know that a drug works, but won’t understand exactly how-and that means new uses for old drugs are found all the time. Scientists know how individual parts of the body work, but how all the body’s systems work together is still somewhat of a mystery. The drug that makes Viagra work is now also sold under the name Revatio, for pulmonary arterial hypertension. Sure enough, in 2005, the FDA approved the same compound for a heart condition called pulmonary arterial hypertension, which constricts the blood flow to the lungs and affects both men and women. About a decade later, researchers began running new clinical trials to see if it could double as a heart drug as originally intended. Viagra was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration for use as an erectile dysfunction drug in 1998. And with that, the so-called “ potency pill” was born. The sildenafil was working-but in the wrong part of the body. ”A very observant nurse reported this, saying the men were embarrassed they were getting erections.” It appeared that the blood vessels dilating were not in the heart, but rather the penis (dilating blood vessels is part of the process that leads to erections). “They found a lot of the men were lying on their stomachs,” John LaMattina, who was the head of research and development at Pfizer while this research was ongoing, said on a 2016 episode of the STAT Signal Podcast (listen in around 7:15). So, it was brought into a phase one clinical trial in the early 1990s, to test whether humans can tolerate a new compound.Īll seemed to be going well-except for one weird thing the men enrolled in the study did when nurses went to check on them. In animal tests, it seemed to work moderately well: researchers could find evidence that it was impeding PDE-5, and the animals weren’t having any obvious negative side effects. It was meant to dilate the heart’s blood vessels by blocking a particular protein called PDE-5. Sildenafil, the active ingredient in Viagra, was originally developed to treat cardiovascular problems. The US military shells out $41.6 million per year for it, and from 2012 onward, the US, Mexico, and Canada spent about $1.4 billion on it annually (although those numbers are projected to fall in the coming years when Pfizer’s patent on the drug expires in 2020).ĭespite the drug’s popularity today, the researchers who discovered it weren’t even looking for it. In 20 years, it’s become ubiquitous: 62 million men all over the world have bought the drug, according to a Pfizer spokesperson. Viagra, Pfizer’s blockbuster erectile dysfunction drug hit the market in 1998. The little blue pill may not have ever been if not for one dutiful nurse.
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