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Sildenafil, the active ingredient in Viagra, enables pediatricians to more effectively treat some of their young patients with cardiac and pulmonary problems.
For more than 17 years, Viagra has helped millions of impotent men to resume their sex lives after erectile dysfunction had temporarily sidelined them. In this way, the drug has been a godsend to those men and their sexual partners.
Today, the little blue pill is proving no less a godsend to hundreds of children — and their parents — who are suffering from congenital cardiac and pulmonary problems that, left untreated, could take their lives.
In one of the more recent examples of Viagra’s healing powers for these children, CBS2 in New York City reported in November 2015 how Viagra is helping to save the life of 4-year-old Victoria Dooley who was born with a rare condition causing one-half of her heart to fail.
May Require Transplant Eventually
Interviewed by CBS medical correspondent Dr. Max Gomez, Ann Chun, M.D., Victoria’s pediatric cardiologist, said that Victoria has already undergone three surgeries and will likely require a heart transplant when she enters her teens.
Although Victoria’s overall cardiac function continues to decrease as she ages, low doses of Viagra enable her heart to function at a higher capacity than would be possible without the drug. The drug “really helps to relax the blood vessels so that blood will flow normally from the body into the lungs and allow for normal oxygen levels,” says Dr. Chun. Using sildenafil citrate, the active ingredient in Viagra, extends Victoria’s life expectancy, allowing her to reach an age at which heart surgery would be more feasible and less dangerous.
Parents Surprised
Victoria’s parents, Shawn and Cynthia Dooley, admitted to Dr. Gomez that they were surprised when first told that their child would be treated with Viagra, but they expressed gratitude that the drug has allowed Victoria to enjoy a relatively normal childhood. “When you first hear about it, you think about it more for the adult uses,” Shawn Dooley said.
Viagra is also prescribed for some adults with heart and pulmonary problems, but its use in children is currently considered “off-label.” However, a number of children’s hospitals across the country have reported life-saving results from the drug in treating pediatric patients with serious heart and lung problems.
Treats Pulmonary Hypertension
Under the brand name Revatio, sildenafil citrate is marketed for the treatment of pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) in adults. Available in white 20-milligram tablets or single-use 10-milligram vials for injection, Revatio reduces blood pressure in the lungs, allowing PAH patients to live more active and normal lives.
According to the CBS2 report about the use of Viagra in treating Victoria Dooley’s heart problems, the drug is also being used in small doses to treat pulmonary hypertension in premature babies. This condition is said to be the leading cause of death in premature babies after their first month of life.
A case study from a few years back illustrates how Viagra’s active ingredient has helped children with pulmonary problems to improve their breathing by dilating the arteries in their lungs, thus increasing blood flow into the lower respiratory system. In 2003, pediatrician Jerril Green, M.D., a critical care specialist at Arkansas Children’s Hospital in Little Rock, opted to use sildenafil to treat 2-year-old Chance Collins who was born three months prematurely and suffered from severe lung problems.
Why Viagra on a 2-Year-Old?
As was the case with the Dooleys, Chance’s parents, Candace and Ronnie Collins, were taken aback when Dr. Green told them of his decision to put Chance on a drug best known for treating erectile dysfunction. “It was quite a shock,” Candace Collins says. “I started asking, ‘Why would you use that on a 2-year-old?'” Despite their initial shock, Chance’s parents consented to this unusual therapy in hopes it could help their very sick son.
At one point Chance had a severe pulmonary attack that put him in the hospital for several months. As is customary in such cases, he was given a tracheotomy, which works like a respirator and has a feeding tube attached. Although doctors had to hook Chance up to a ventilator, giving him small doses of sildenafil has allowed doctors to turn down his ventilator and even permit Chance to leave his bed briefly for play sessions.
Significant Improvement
Chance’s mother said that her son’s overall health and wellbeing definitely improved once he was put on sildenafil. “He was so sick before and there were several times we thought we were going to lose him,” she says.
Dr. Green reports that in the early days of putting Chance on Viagra’s active ingredient, there was one side effect that was hard to ignore. “When Chance was first started on this, when he would get a dose of it, he would have an erection for a short time,” Dr. Green says. “He gets it [Viagra] every day, three times a day now, so that doesn’t happen anymore.”
In yet another instance of Viagra’s benefits for younger patients, researchers reported in May 2014 that the active ingredients in Viagra and Cialis (tadalafil) appear to help boys who are suffering from a muscle disease known as Duchenne muscular dystrophy, or DMD. The disease is an inherited disorder characterized by progressive muscle degeneration. DMD, which affects roughly 1 in every 3,600 boys, eventually leads to loss of movement, paralysis, and premature death.
Study Published in ‘Neurology’
The small-scale study, published in the May 2014 issue of “Neurology,” found that doses of sildenafil and tadalafil improved blood flow to the weakened muscles of the 10 young DMD patients who were the subjects of the study. Of these findings, lead researcher Ronald Victor, M.D., said, “Boys with Duchenne muscular dystrophy have a blood flow abnormality — delivery of blood and oxygen to their muscles — that does not increase the way it should during mild exercise.”
Dr. Victor, associate director of the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute in Los Angeles, explained that the study compared 10 boys — ages 8 to 13 — with DMD who were being treated with steroids with 10 healthy boys in the same age range. All of the DMD patients were still ambulatory, although a few relied at times on wheelchairs or scooters.
Blood Flow Equalized
Researchers measured blood flow in all 20 boys both when they were at rest and when they were doing a handgrip exercise. These tests revealed that the DMD patients had abnormal blood flow even when they were taking steroids. The DMD patients were then randomly dosed with either sildenafil or tadalafil, after which the tests were repeated. After a period of two weeks, the boys who originally received sildenafil were switched to tadalafil, while those who got tadalafil originally were now given sildenafil. Dr. Victor and his colleagues found that both sildenafil and tadalafil improved blood flow in the DMD patients to the point that it was equal to that in the healthy boys.
Once again, there were a few tell-tale side effects, said Dr. Victor. “A few boys in our study had erections after taking these drugs. The erections were not painful and not dangerous and resolved spontaneously without treatment.”
To read more about the health benefits of Viagra and the other erectile dysfunction drugs — both as a treatment for impotence and their use for other ailments — click on this check out our blog.
Don Amerman is a freelance author who writes extensively about a wide array of nutrition and health-related topics.
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