Viagra May Treat Heart Failure
By Steven Reinberg HealthDay Reporter
MONDAY, Oct. 24 (HealthDay News) -- Viagra, famous for improving men's sexual function, also appears to reduce the effects of hormonal stress on the heart by 50 percent, claims a report by researchers at Johns Hopkins University.
Viagra (sildenafil) works by helping genital blood vessels expand to maintain an erection, but more recently, it has also been used as a treatment for pulmonary hypertension. However, the drug has been thought to have no direct effect on the heart.
"Unlike what was previously thought, drugs like Viagra can in fact alter heart function," said lead researcher Dr. David Kass, a professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins. "It alters it particularly when the heart is stimulated by hormones."
The report appears in the Oct. 24 online edition of Circulation.
http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=55034
Read the other reply, more detailed then mine. Viagra was orignally a heart drug, per the creator.
It just so happened that Viagra was originally used in England to improve heart functions in patients who had severe heart disease and chronic chest pain, and it didn't work. But many of these patients, who were also impotent, were awakening in the morning with erections when they had been impotent One of the researchers at Pfizer Pharmaceuticals in England realized this and thought maybe it would work for impotence. That's how Viagra became a drug for impotence.
http://www.cnn.com/HEALTH/men/9905/11/murdock.chat/index.html