A heart attack deprives the person's heart of oxygen resulting in significant damage to heart muscle and tissue. New research now claims that Viagra, medically known as sildenafil, can help repair the heart damage and improve their chances of survival.
United Press International quoted Rakesh C. Kukreja, a professor of medicine and chairman of cardiology at Virginia Commonwealth University as saying, "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."
The Virginia researchers concluded their results after studying two erectile dysfunction drugs namely Viagra and Levitra in animal models. Comparatively, nitroglycerin did not reduce damage to the heart muscle.
Sildenafil, a vasodilator (that is, a drug that dilates blood vessels) also lowers the systolic blood pressure by an average of eight mmHg and also interacts with the nitrates. Hence the American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association concur that sildenafil is safe for men with stable coronary artery disease who are not taking nitrates, but should never be used in patients who are taking nitrates.
Nitrates include all forms of nitroglycerin - sublingual, transdermal and spray forms - as well as isosorbide mononitrate, isosorbide dinitrate, pentaerythritol tetranitrate, erythrityl tetranitrate, and amyl nitrate.
The findings were published in the February issue of the Journal of Molecular and Cellular Cardiology.
