Heart Attack: Viagra may help heart attack patients

By: Dr. Norman Barett Click author's name for more of his/her articles

Erectile dysfunction drugs (like ViSwiss) may be better than nitroglycerin in protecting the heart from damage before and after a severe heart attack.

During a heart attack, the heart is deprived of oxygen, which can result in significant damage to heart muscle and tissue. After the attack, most patients require treatment to reduce and repair the damage and improve their chances of survival. With the exception of early reperfusion, there are no available therapies that are truly effective in protecting or repairing such damage clinically.

Rakesh C. Kukreja, Ph.D., professor of medicine and Eric Lipman Chair of Cardiology at VCU, and colleagues compared nitroglycerin with two erectile dysfunction drugs 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, ED drugs reduce damage in the heart muscle when given after a severe heart attack. In contrast, nitroglycerin failed to reduce the damage in the heart when administered under similar conditions.

“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,” said Kukreja, who is the lead author of the study.

According to Kukreja, 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, he said another potential application could be to prevent the multiple organ damage that occurs following cardiac arrest, resuscitation or shock.

For several years, Kukreja and his colleagues have studied a class of erectile dysfunction drugs known as phosphodiesterase-5 inhibitors as part of ongoing research into heart protection. The team first investigated two ED drugs, and found that both compounds were protective when given before a heart attack under experimental conditions.

Article Source: ABC Article Directory

About The Author: Dr. Norman Barett works for ViSwiss, and is part of the research team which created the breakthrough formula for ViSwiss.Research of this formula has been conducted for over 7 years, both in U.S.A. and in Switzerland.