|
medpundit |
||
 |
 |
|
Saturday, May 28, 2005A spokesman for Pfizer, the makers of the drug, said the company was considering changing its warning on the drug label. "We are in discussions with the FDA to update our language to reflect these rare ocular events that have occurred," said Daniel Watts. ....There have been no reports of the condition among 13,000 people tested in clinical trials for the drug. The condition, known as nonarteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy (NAION), causes a rapid reduction of vision and can, in the most serious cases, lead to blindness. Dr Howard Pomeranz, co-author of a report on the condition published in the Journal of Neuro-ophthalmology in April, said the drug had long been linked to sight problems. Viagra was known to cause temporary colour changes in some men's vision, he said, but NAION was a much more serious condition. Granted, a sudden drop in blood pressure - as could happen if a person were to take Viagra with nitrates - could theoretically cause nonarteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy, but there's no reason to suppose that these few cases are due to Viagra. The condition is caused by a loss of blood flow to the eye. The "arteritic" type is rarer, and usually caused by an autoimmune induced inflammation of the blood vessels - (the "arteritic" comes from the word for that inflammation - "arteritis.") The non-arteritic type is much more common, occurring in 2.3-10.3 per 100,000 in the U.S. It is also often associated with other vascular diseases: NAION is not commonly associated with life-threatening conditions, although the presence of other vascular conditions is frequent (eg, hypertension, 46.9%; diabetes, 23.9%; myocardial infarction, 11%). I'll be darned. Those are the same diseases associated with impotence. Is it all that surprising some of the people who develop NAION take Viagra? What's surprising is that only 50 of them have been identified so far. posted by Sydney on 5/28/2005 09:58:00 PM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
|
