Viagra Articles

Viagra giving rise to new breed of bedroom pills

NOT TOO LONG ago, a couple seeking help in the bedroom visited the St. Paul, Minn., office of nationally known sex therapist Michael Metz.

"The man said that he was upset, that he was suffering from premature ejaculation," said Metz, a psychologist and co-author of "Coping With Erectile Dysfunction: How to Regain Confidence and Enjoy Great Sex."

"Then I turned to the woman and she said, 'Hey, it's not a problem.' "

Whether a problem or not to the couple, sexual performance is enough of an issue that the American pharmaceutical industry - buoyed by the phenomenal success of Viagra and other drugs to treat impotence - is spending millions of dollars on the next generation of sex drugs.

Last month, the world of sex treatment was rocked by news that a drug under development by New Jersey-based Johnson & Johnson called dapoxetine showed impressive effects in clinical trials as the first-ever pill for premature ejaculation, or PE.

The potential market for such a product actually dwarfs the number of Americans who suffer from erectile dysfunction, a phrase that few people knew until Pfizer Corp. and its rivals launched megabucks ad campaigns for the first round of sex pills.

The American Urological Society estimates that PE may affect 27 percent to 34 percent of men across all age ranges, while erectile dysfunction is estimated to affect just 10-12 percent of all men, who are usually older.

Dr. Jon Pryor, chairman of urologic surgery at the University of Minnesota and lead researcher on the dapoxetine study on 2,614 men, told the Daily News that the drug - which helped them increase their intercourse time from under one minute to more than three minutes, on average - could meet a critical need.

"Many men with PE report significantly diminished quality of life," Pryor said by e-mail. "They hesitate to seek relationships and have low self-esteem. Those men who are in relationships experience interpersonal difficulties, including the breakdown of intimacy and communication with their partners."

Wall Street analysts say that dapoxetine - which will require approval from the Food and Drug Administration and which does not yet have a catchy brand name - could reap $500 million in sales in its first year.

And although the research by Johnson & Johnson, which declined to discuss dapoxetine while it is still in clinical trials, is getting the most hype, it is hardly the only potential sex drug now in the lab.

A slew of companies are racing to produce medication that might treat the No. 1 reported sexual problem among women, which is lack of libido. That is estimated as a potential $3-billion-a-year market.

Most of those treatments in the works involve some use of testosterone, the hormone associated in most people's minds with the male sex drive but actually affects desire in both sexes.

Procter & Gamble is again trying with a testosterone patch, Intrinsa, which was rejected by an FDA advisory committee in the first go-round. Other products in the works include several skin gels and sprays.

"There's a huge pent-up demand for this product as long as it is safe and shown to be effective," said Peter Tam, senior vice president of product and corporate development for Vivus, Inc., which is developing one of the sprays. "I think a lot of women would use it."

Indeed, the desire for new sex drugs is strong enough that many men or women are seeking so-called "off-label" medical solutions - that is, medications not approved by regulators.

Some women seek out testosterone creams that are already on the market for other purposes such as treating depression. For men, some physicians prescribe anti-depressants that have sexual side effects - including Paxil, which lowers desire, for PE, or Welbutrin, which some patients say increases the urge for sex.

But not surprisingly, many sex experts are wondering if all these sex drugs - with their over-the-top marketing claims and their warnings about four-hour erections - may be distorting ideas about what makes for good sex.

More than a generation ago, the song "In the Year 2525" warned of a time when "everything you think, do and say, is in the pill that you took today." Is the day coming soon when everything having to do with sex has its own pill?

"Some men think that it's some kind of magic cure," noted Arlene Goldman, a Center City sex therapist and author of a recent book for Psychology Today, "Secrets of Sexual Ecstasy." As a result, she said, they're less likely to work on other ways to improve sex or to deal with other emotional issues that might be causing problems in bed.

Metz, the leading authority on PE, calls sex drugs "the Bud Light approach to sex," fueled by multimillion-dollar ad campaigns promising hyper-sexuality.

Although some performance issues stem from treatable medical problems, therapist Metz said that underlying emotional issues, such as performance anxiety or anger over issues in a relationship, also play a part.

But one well-known psychologist, Dr. Joyce Brothers, said that sex drugs may lead to a kind of chicken-or-egg solution, since just the very act of taking such a pill may give men the confidence they need for good sex - regardless of whether the drug really works medically.

"Remember the movie 'Dumbo'? - Dumbo the elephant needed a feather to fly," Brothers said by telephone from New York. "Well, for many men what [sex drugs] do is it allows them to fly."

Indeed, before the advent of sex drugs, some techniques for dealing with problems in bed became the stuff of legend. The most famous was Woody Allen's technique for prolonging intercourse in the movie "Play It Again Sam," in which he thinks of the names of famous baseball players.

"That actually makes it worse," laughed therapist Goldman, who said that it's better for men to focus on their performance. But she worries in the future, how many men will focus only on what's in their medicine cabinet.