Impotence drugs may beat nitroglycerin for heart protection
Erectile dysfunction drugs may be better than nitroglycerin in protecting the heart from damage before and after a severe heart attack, according to Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) research findings.
Professor Rakesh C Kukreja and Eric Lipman, chair of Cardiology at VCU, and colleagues compared nitroglycerin with two popular erectile dysfunction drugs – Viagra, generically known as sildenafil, and Levitra, generically known as vardenafil – to determine the effectiveness of each for heart protection following a heart attack.
Nitroglycerin is a drug used to treat angina, or chest pain. It is a vasodilator and opens blood vessels in order to improve the flow of blood to a patient’s heart.
The research team reported that in an animal model, sildenafil and vardenafil reduce damage in the heart muscle when given after a severe heart attac. In contrast, nitroglycerin failed to reduce the damage in the heart when administered under similar conditions. The findings were published in the February issue of the Journal of Molecular and Cellular Cardiology.
Prof Kukreja said that “erectile dysfunction drugs can prevent damage in the heart not only when given before a heart attack, as we discovered previously, but also lessen the injury after the heart attack”.
He said that the protective effects on the heart produced by these erectile dysfunction drugs may be potentially useful as adjunct therapy in patients undergoing elective procedures, including coronary artery bypass graft, coronary angioplasty or heart transplantation.
In addition, another potential application could be to prevent the multiple organ damage that occurred following cardiac arrest, resuscitation or shock.
