What is the impact of Viagra on female sexuality?

Viagra is the magic blue pill, a registered trademark of Pfizer that has been well talked about because of its sex-boosting ability. After becoming available as the first oral prescription drug approved by the Food and Drug Administration in April 1998, Viagra tablets still rank as one of the all time best selling drugs till date.

The sales figure for Viagra tablets – given by the drug prescription-tracking giant IMS Health – in just the first year of release into the market is staggering: About 1.2 billion US dollars have been grossed from the sale of Viagra, and over 13 million men all over the world are on prescription of the diamond-shaped blue pill.

A major impact that Viagra has brought is that pharmaceutical companies all over the world have begun looking at the possibility of playing a part in the vast ED market, and there are even growing questions about how the recent advances and better understanding of men’s sexual dysfunctional problems can be of benefit to women – especially in the area of Viagra tablets as a treatment for their various sexual problems.

A recent statistical survey conducted by the American Medical Association showed that the incidents of sexual dysfunctions are higher in women than men. The study showed that about 43 percent of women have one form of sexual dysfunction or the other as compared to the 31 percent incident rate in men. Despite showing that there is a large and underserved market in the area of treating sexual dysfunctions in women, just how Viagra tablets can help solve this problem is still not clear.

Pfizer, Inc., have constantly reiterated that the drug was originally designed to treat men with angina pectoris and hypertension. But when the Viagra tablets, rather than treat the angina, produced rock-hard erections among this group of men who were believed to be impotent, it was marketed as a treatment for ED.

It is common knowledge that Viagra tablets produce their erectile effect – through the aid of their sildenafil active ingredient – by relaxing the smooth muscles to enable blood to flow into the corpus cavernosum of the penis.

Researchers have often liken the erection pathway in men to that of women, and some of them even believe that the flow of blood to the clitoris could be central to the enhancement of sexual activity in women. So any drug like Viagra, they have argued, that could facilitate the flow of blood to the clitoris can actually be effective in the treatment of sexual dysfunctions in women.

If this assertion is true, a moot question that would be raised is: Why is Pfizer not marketing Viagra as a treatment for sexual dysfunctions in women?

Maryann Caprino, a spokeswoman for Pfizer, in responding to the ‘Viagra for women’ question, opined that at the moment the complex nature of sexual dysfunctions in women simply made it difficult for Viagra tablets to be marketed to women.

Any woman who wants to buy Viagra tablets would have to be patient until a better understanding of sexual dysfunctions among this sex is achieved.

However, this opinion has gone unheeded if the words of some doctors are anything to go by. Dr. H. Nurnberg, a respondent from the University of New Mexico, was of the express belief that women respond better to Viagra than men.

Nurnberg’s belief stemmed from a personal research that he carried out on a group of women who were expressing temporary sexual dysfunction that had been induced by antidepressants. After making these women take Viagra tablets, Nurnberg was able to find out that the diamond-shaped drug helped the women to finish their therapy while retaining their sexual activity.