Wednesday, April 29, 1998
The University Daily Kansan
Section A · Page 7
New impotence drug makes for happier love lives
Viagra generating interest as cure for plaguing problem
By Lisa Stevens John
john@kansan.com
Kansan staff writer
Impotence is a huge problem, a physician at the University of Kansas Medical Center said.
But because of Viagra, an oral medication approved by the Food and Drug Administration in March to treat impotence, there is help. Each Viagra pill costs about $10, and John Weigel, a physician at the Med Center's urology department, said he expected that the cost would drop in a couple of years.
Weigel said that since Viagra had hit the market, his office had received hundreds of phone calls from interested patients.
Ironically, Weigel said this drug originally was not intended to target impotence.
"When it first came out, it was an anti-hypertensive, used to treat high pressure," Weigel said. "Then somebody noticed that, 'Boy, things are getting a lot better around the house at night."
John Weigel
Weigel said that by itself, Viagra did not cause an erection automatically.
Physician at the Med Center urology department
"It requires stimulation," he said. "Once stimulation occurs, it simply increases the blood flow to the penis."
"When it first came out,it was an anti-hypertensive used to treat high blood pressure," Weigel said. "Then somebody noticed that, 'Boy, things are getting a lot better around the house at night.'"
Weigel said that the pill should be taken one hour before the patient plans to become sexually active. The drug is active for four to five hours and is totally out of the system in 17 hours, he said.
Minor side effects, such as flushed skin, headaches, indigestion and a change in color vision, are temporary. Weigel said.
This is a breakthrough medication in this area, Weigel said.
"Viagra is the first oral medication that really works. It works in about 70 percent of the people who take it." Weigel said.
The FDA reports that millions of men are affected by impotence.
"Typically, by the age of 40, two out of five men will have a problem with impotence," Weigel said. "By the age of 70 or so, probably 60 percent have had a problem."
Randall Rock, chief of staff at Watkins Health Center, said he was not aware of a significant number of requests for Viagra at
"The target users of Viagra would traditionally be an older population than is traditionally represented at the university level," he said.
the center.
Women also have expressed interest in Viagra, Weigel said, as some believe it also may enhance the women's sexual experiences.
Though Viagra is deemed to be relatively risk-free, Weigel said he checks for diabetes and kidney failure and does a testosterone check before he prescribes it for a male. It also is important to make
sure that the patient isn't taking another medication that would be contra-indicated, he said.
Weigel said he was concerned about a new breed of Internet machine.
Weigel said that until now, the man who used the treatments for impotence had moved from seeking help.
"In the past, lots of the cures
In the past, the cures have been pretty invasive." Weigel said. "The first thing that came along were penile implants. It's a pretty big operation. It's expensive, and there's a risk of infection and of mechanical malfunction."
Next came vacuum devices,
Weigel said.
"They were pretty numbersome. A lot of people still use them, but for the single individual, it's not going to be an option — to get all this equipment out on a date, it sort of takes the romance out of things." Weigel said.
Other aids included the injection of medications into the penis,
and tablets that were inserted into the urethra, both procedures that Weigel said could be painful.
"So with Viagra, what's happening is that people are coming out of the woodwork now who weren't interested in the more invasive things," Weigel said.
"Now on the Internet, there are some docs who, for $50, will give you a telephone interview and will call in a prescription for you." Weigel said. So people can get a prescription without ever even going to a doc. The American Medical Association has strongly come out against this Internet approach, but I don't think there's a mechanism to shut them down. Unfortunately, where there's money, there's usually a scam."
But for now, he said, the cost was worth the cure.
"If you can hold marria together and keep count together for a relatively small amount of money, it's well worth the cost," he said.
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