Impotence Drug May Help Fight Rare Lung Disease: Study
Impotence Drug May Help Fight Rare Lung Disease: Study
By Dennis Thompson
HealthDay Reporter
WEDNESDAY, Aug. 26, 2015 (HealthDay News) -- A combination treatment that includes the active ingredient in the erectile dysfunction drug Cialis may reduce death and hospitalization from an incurable lung disease that mainly affects women, a new clinical trial shows.
When combined with a blood pressure medication called ambrisentan (Letairis), a high dosage of tadalafil (Adcirca) significantly reduced the progression of pulmonary arterial hypertension, according to results published in the Aug. 27 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. The condition involves high blood pressure in the arteries leading into the lungs.
Patients who took the combination therapy were half as likely to die, require hospitalization or have severe progression of their illness, when compared with people who only received one of the two drugs, researchers found. People using tadalafil for pulmonary arterial hypertension take 40 milligrams (mg) a day, while the dosage for erectile dysfunction runs between 2.5 mg and 20 mg a day.
The results were so encouraging that the marketer of ambrisentan in the United States has submitted a request to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration so this combination use can be added to the drug's label, said senior study author Dr. Lewis Rubin, an emeritus professor of medicine at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine.
Dr. Carl Pepine, past president of the American College of Cardiology, said the results "offer an easy-to-use additional treatment for patients who have this unfortunate condition, who are largely women."
The two drugs work in different ways to ease the effects of pulmonary arterial hypertension, so researchers decided to see if their impact would be greater used in tandem, Rubin explained.
"This is a complex disease. There's no magic bullet," Rubin said. "We postulated that the more pathways you target, the better the effect would be."
Pulmonary arterial hypertension causes people to be chronically short of breath, as their blood has difficulty getting through the lungs to pick up oxygen. It eventually leads to heart failure because the heart has to pump harder to keep blood circulating through the body.
HealthDay Reporter
WEDNESDAY, Aug. 26, 2015 (HealthDay News) -- A combination treatment that includes the active ingredient in the erectile dysfunction drug Cialis may reduce death and hospitalization from an incurable lung disease that mainly affects women, a new clinical trial shows.
When combined with a blood pressure medication called ambrisentan (Letairis), a high dosage of tadalafil (Adcirca) significantly reduced the progression of pulmonary arterial hypertension, according to results published in the Aug. 27 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. The condition involves high blood pressure in the arteries leading into the lungs.
Patients who took the combination therapy were half as likely to die, require hospitalization or have severe progression of their illness, when compared with people who only received one of the two drugs, researchers found. People using tadalafil for pulmonary arterial hypertension take 40 milligrams (mg) a day, while the dosage for erectile dysfunction runs between 2.5 mg and 20 mg a day.
The results were so encouraging that the marketer of ambrisentan in the United States has submitted a request to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration so this combination use can be added to the drug's label, said senior study author Dr. Lewis Rubin, an emeritus professor of medicine at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine.
Dr. Carl Pepine, past president of the American College of Cardiology, said the results "offer an easy-to-use additional treatment for patients who have this unfortunate condition, who are largely women."
The two drugs work in different ways to ease the effects of pulmonary arterial hypertension, so researchers decided to see if their impact would be greater used in tandem, Rubin explained.
"This is a complex disease. There's no magic bullet," Rubin said. "We postulated that the more pathways you target, the better the effect would be."
Pulmonary arterial hypertension causes people to be chronically short of breath, as their blood has difficulty getting through the lungs to pick up oxygen. It eventually leads to heart failure because the heart has to pump harder to keep blood circulating through the body.
