Female Viagra: Is the wait finally over?
Thursday, December 10th, 2009
The release of Viagra pills into the market came with the announcement that the discovery of the magic drug was serendipitous. The drug only became marketed as an anti-impotence drug after it was discovered that the men who were given the little blue pills to take home as part of clinical trials for a newly developed drug that was intended to be used for the treatment of Angina pectoris and pulmonary arterial hypertension produced a surprising, albeit welcome, side effects.
When the men refused to return the pills they were given, the pharmaceutical chemists who worked on the new formulation started asking questions, and it was soon found out that the reason why the men had refused to return the drug was because the drug had made the men attain erection, a scenario which was quiet alien to them prior to using Viagra tablets.
Fast forward more than ten years later, history is about to repeat itself, it seems.
A new drug – Flibanserin – has been developed in similar circumstances, but among women this time around.
Produced by the German drug maker Boehringer Ingelheim, Flibanserin (BIMT-17) is a drug that is currently being investigated as a drug for women who are experiencing a decrease in their sexual desire.
The German company had been simply trying to develop a fast-acting antidepressant, one that patients would respond to in a matter of days, not weeks as in most current treatments and hadn’t set out to produce a Viagra-like drug for women.
However, Boehringer Ingelheim reported on November 16, 2009, that late-stage trials for the Viagra-like drug showed that the drug enhanced sexual desire and increased the number of “satisfying sexual events” in women whose libidos were abnormally low.
The results of four Phase III studies involving over 2,000 woman who were in pre-menopausal stage and who were suffering from a type of disorder known as Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder (HSDD) were presented at the congress of the European Society for Sexual Medicine in France.
According to women who use the drug, the average number of times they experienced “satisfying sexual events” increased from 2.8 to 4.5 times a month. Women who used the placebo, however, said the number of times they experienced such satisfying sexual events increased to 3.7 times a month.
Unlike Viagra pills, Flibanserin must be taken once daily and could take up to a month before it can start to produce its effect.
Flibanserin increases dopamine and noradrenalin and decreases serotonin in animals.
Mechanism of action
Flibanserin helps to enhance female libido by directly manipulating the chain of chemical reactions in the brain that are believed to be responsible for triggering sexual desire.
This is quite different from Procter & Gamble’s hormone patch Intrinsa, which is aimed at helping women in their post-menopausal stage.
Clinical trials
As of November 2009, Phase III clinical trials are ongoing. The aim of these trials is to assess the safety and efficiency of the drug in pre- and post-menopausal women.
If this groundbreaking drug is passed safe and efficient for the treatment of sexual dysfunctions in women, it would be a major breakthrough in this widely unknown field.
