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| 'Female Viagra' boosts desire in women with flagging libido Women who took the drug during a trial reported more satisfying sexual encounters and a higher libidoEver since Viagra arrived a decade ago and became a global blockbuster worth billions, an equivalent that works wonders for women has been the Holy Grail for drug companies.Yesterday, doctors announced that the search might finally be over. A major clinical trial of a drug some already describe as the "female Viagra" showed it can boost sexual desire in women whose libidos are flagging.The drug, which was originally developed as an antidepressant but was later found to have libido-boosting side effects, could be approved for use in Britain within 18 months.Women who took the drug during the six-month trial reported more satisfying sexual encounters and higher libidos than those who were given a placebo.Doctors involved in the study said the drug may prove to be an effective treatment for low libido, a problem they estimate affects between 9% and 26% of women, depending on their age and whether they have been through the menopause.The drug has proved controversial among sex researchers. Some argue pharmaceutical companies are exaggerating the number of women affected by low libido to expand their market, and are pushing a pill that will not deal with psychological issues that might put someone off sex, such as poor body image or stress.Nearly 2,000 pre-menopausal women aged 18 and above took part in the study after being diagnosed with a condition called "hypoactive sexual desire disorder", characterised by a very low libido for long periods of time.Women who took a daily 100mg dose of the drug, called flibanserin, reported having satisfying sex more often than those who took a placebo. Before the trial, subjects reported an average of 2.8 satsifying sexual events per month. Those who took daily flibanserin saw this rise to 4.5 times a month, compared with a rise to 3.7 times a month for those taking placebo. None of the women knew whether they were taking the drug or the sham pills."It's essentially a Viagra-like drug for women in that diminished desire or libido is the most common feminine sexual problem, like erectile dysfunction in men," said John Thorp, professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at the University of North Carolina Medical School. The results were announced today at a meeting of the European Society for Sexual Medicine in Lyon.Flibanserin was originally developed as an antidepressant by the German pharmaceutical company Boehringer Ingelheim. The drug performed badly in clinical trials and was never approved, but questionnaires given to the patients revealed that an unexpected side effect for women was a boost to their libido. According to some reports, some women were unwilling to give the pills back once the trial was over."Flibanserin was a poor antidepressant," said Thorp, who was involved in running the latest trial. "However, astute observers noted that it increased libido in laboratory animals and human subjects. So we conducted multiple clinical trials and the women in our studies who took it for hypoactive sexual desire disorder reported significant improvements in sexual desire and satisfactory sexual experiences."Viagra was originally developed as a treatment for high blood pressure and the heart condition angina, but men who took part in early trials realised the drug had an interesting side effect. The drug arrived in 1998 and has since been prescribed to 25 million men creating a multibillion pound global market.In the latest trial, doctors asked women to keep a record of how often they had satisfying sex and to rank their day-to-day sexual desire in an electronic diary. A variety of other tests were used to assess their libidos and levels of stress experienced during sex. These were compared with information taken before and after the trial.Thorp said the results point to a possible treatment for "the sexual problem that plagues reproductive age women the most".Petra Boynton, a healthcare researcher at University College London, said the pill was not a "magic bullet" and feared it could stop couples talking through underlying issues. "There are all kinds of physical, psychological and emotional reasons that could put someone off sex and a pill is not going to help resolve those. It's not going to make you feel better about your body image and it won't make your partner better in bed," she said.A spokeswoman for Boehringer Ingelheim said the drug could be approved for treating women with a low libido within 18 months. The data from the latest trials will be sent to American and European drug regulators to review.ReproductionPsychologyMedical researchSexual healthHealthHealth & wellbeingDrugsWomenIan Sampleguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Virtual vote gives you a voice at Copenhagen With three days until the United Nations climate summit kicks off in Copenhagen, internet giant Google has helped launch a new tool to give people a vote on the outcome of the crucial meeting. abc.net.au |
Virgin Galactic unveils commercial spaceship MOJAVE, Calif. (AP) -- The sleek, bullet-shaped spacecraft is about the size of a large business jet - with wide windows and seats for six well-heeled passengers to take a thrill ride into space.... hosted.ap.org |
We suffered, prospered, survived Originally published on 31 December 1999Tomorrow we salute the start of a new era in history. Today we say farewell to the turbulent 20th centuryWhat would they make of us now, those cheerful, confident subjects of the old queen, secure in the certainty that Britain was great and progress would make it still greater, who launched us 99 years ago into the 20th century? In some ways, they would find our world reassuringly familiar. There is still a Queen on the throne and a parliament at Westminster and cricket at Lord's. But elsewhere, our lives would astonish them.Most of these astonishments have something to do with science. The science is neutral; what makes it decisive for good or ill is the use to which we put it. In this century, we developed the means to destroy our planet. That it has been a time of unparalleled violence is not exclusively due to science. There was nothing very advanced about the technology of Auschwitz, or Cambodia, or Tutsi versus Hutu. But superior technology brought new pitches of destruction to war. In the Boer war, 20,000 British soldiers died, but three-quarters of those were due to disease. In the second world war, with a huge increase in airpower, perhaps 55 million people died. Nobody really knows. But in peace, we are safer than ever. Afflictions which in the first decade of this century were often fatal are now put right with a few convenient pills. Reading newspaper obituaries or even studying tombstones in graveyards, visiting Victorians would marvel at the ages we live to now.The car transports us about our own country and the aeroplane takes us to lands to which only a privileged few once had access. Science has taken us to the moon. We have radio and television, and the greatest transformation of all: the world wide web. As they walked our streets, Victorians would be mystified by the spectacle of so many chattering away to themselves, in a way that was once thought demented. But life without a mobile is unimaginable today.How should we account for ourselves, at the end of this century? In most senses, we are exceedingly lucky. We have survived; in a way that sometimes at the height of the second world war seemed in doubt. We may not be as rich as we wish to be, but by every previous standard, most people in Britain are swimming in money.The huge success of the Jubilee 2000 campaign on world debt, the explosion of green thinking, the campaigns against genetically modified crops – all of these furnish abundant evidence that the great greedy western consumer society, prospering while millions starve, is breeding suspicion, fear and a taste for remedial action.But that is hardly the general mood of the pubs, clubs and shopping precincts. There are sporadic outbursts of real generosity for suffering people whose plight is shown nightly on television. But a longer, deeper commitment to making the world a fairer and more hospitable place remains a minority taste. In the early years of this century a great radical politician born in the age of Victoria, David Lloyd George, looked forward "to that good time when poverty, wretchedness and the human degradation which always follows in its camp will be as remote to the people of this country as the wolves which once infested its forests". We are nearer to that today, but after almost a century, still nowhere as close as we ought to be. We have to embrace that aspiration again as a new era opens before us.CommunitiesSecond world warFirst world warSpace technologyguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Ancient birds grew fat and lazy: study The flighted ancestor of birds such as the Australian emu and cassowary became too heavy to fly after the extinction of dinosaurs made it safer to forage for food, a new study suggests. abc.net.au |