Sexuality News
FDA’s panel rejects ‘Female Viagra’
Flibanserin – the ‘pink pill’ purported to be a remedy for the low sexual desire of millions of women fails to convince the Food and Drug Administration. The panel of reproductive advisers felt that the two studies conducted by the promoter Boehringer Ingelheim did not outweigh side effects, including fatigue, depression and fainting.
Drug treatment to boost women’s sex drive remains elusive after a decade of searching by some of the world’s biggest drugmakers.
The proposed drug Flibanserin is originally studied for curbing depression antidepressant , but the resaercher’s interest towards its libido-boosting properties after some women reporting unusually high levels of sexual satisfaction, following the use of the pink pill.
Flibanserin works on serotonin and other brain chemicals, but the exact mechanism by which it boosts libido remains to be understood.
A panelist Paula Hillard, a gynecologist from Stanford University School of Medicine, says: “… women’s sexual health is important and … many women suffer from sexual dysfunction, but I’m not convinced of a clinically meaningful benefit for this drug”.
The FDA will make its own decision on the drug in coming months, though it usually follows the advice of its panelists.
The attempt to trigger sexual interest through brain chemistry is the drug industry’s latest approach to find a female equivalent to the blockbuster success of Pfizer’s erectile dysfunction drug, Viagra.
Since Viagra’s 1998 launch, more than two dozen experimental therapies have been studied for so-called “female sexual dysfunction,” a market worth an estimated $2 billion.
Initially, Pfizer tested Viagra on women, hoping that the drug’s ability to increase blood flow to the genitals would increase libido. When that didn’t work, drugmakers turned to hormones, including testosterone.
In 2004, an FDA panel rejected Procter & Gamble’s testosterone patch, Intrinsa, due to unknown risks from long-term use. Two years earlier a massive government study found that hormone replacement therapy in postmenopausal women increased heart disease and breast cancer, raising concerns about the safety of all hormones.
(courtesy MSN.com)
Read full article: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37786581/ns/health-sexual_health