What are other uses of Viagra?
Pulmonary hypertension:
Just as erectile dysfunction, sildenafil citrate is also effective in such rare disease as pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH). It relaxes the arterial wall, decreasing pulmonary arterial resistance and pressure. This in turn reduces the workload of the right ventricle of the heart and improves symptoms of right-sided heart failure. As far as PDE-5 is primarily distributed within the arterial wall smooth muscle of the lungs and penis, sildenafil acts selectively in both these areas without inducing vasodilation in other areas of the body.
Pfizer submitted an additional registration for sildenafil to the FDA, and it was approved for this indication in June 2005. The medication is named Revatio, to avoid confusion with Viagra, and is available in the 20mgr white and round tablets. Sildenafil joins bosentan and prostacyclin-based therapies for this condition.
Raynaud's phenomenon:
In 2005 Dr. Roland Fries and colleagues reported that sildenafil citrate cut the frequency of Raynaud's phenomenon attacks, decreased their duration by roughly one half, and more than quadrupled the mean capillary blood velocity. This was a double-blind, placebo-controlled crossover trial and the patients had both the primary and secondary forms and had all discontinued the more conventional treatments for this.
There’s also a non-medical use of Viagra such as prevention of plant wilting:
A low-concentration of sildenafil citrate in water significantly prolongs the time before cut flowers wilt; one experiment showed a doubling in time from one week to two weeks. The mechanism of action is similar to that in men: nitric oxide leads to the production of cGMP whose degradation by PDE5 is inhibited by sildenafil.
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