VIAGRA Info

Viagra started life as a medicine intended to treat angina pectoris.

Alfred Nobel - an explosives manufacturer - suffered from angina. In 1890 he was prescribed nitroglycerine (called trinitrin) to relieve the pain of angina attacks. It is still used today.

Over 100 years later, the work of Robert Furchgott, Louis Ignarro and Ferid Murad showed that nitric oxide (NO) was an important signalling molecule in the cardiovascular system. It is released from nerve endings and cells lining the walls of blood vessels. The effect is to make the blood vessel relax, or dilate. It is also involved in the prevention of blood clots. In 1998, they received the Nobel Prize for Physiology. The Nobel prizes were set up by the same Alfred Nobel who had been treated with nitroglycerine.

Building on this knowledge, research by other groups is being undertaken to develop new medicines which moderate the actions of nitric oxide for the treament of cardiovascular and other disorders.

Viagra was developed as a treatment for angina. Its effects as a vasodilator would have surprising results.

All medicines need to be licensed by the medical authorities before they can be prescribed by doctors. To achieve this, trials must show it is safe and effective. Approval usually takes about 12 months but in the case of Viagra it received its licence in only 6 months.

Viagra was given a licence
It could be used in the treatment of Erectile dysfunction in 1998. In its first three months, there were 2.9 million prescriptions for the medicine.

Chinese pandas are being given the anti-impotence drug Viagra, according to the Wen Hui Daily newspaper in Shanghai.

It is hoped that the drug will boost their famously feeble attempts to mate.

Poaching and loss of habitat have reduced the worldwide giant panda population to just 1,000 and many warnings of extinction have been made.

Most efforts to breed the animals in captivity have failed, leading to a recent project to clone panda embryos with the intention of artificially implanting them.