Viagra pills made by Pfizer (Handout / AFP / Getty Images)
Pfizer‘s little blue pill, Viagra, is getting a boost these days from children.
That’s right, the active ingredient in the erectile dysfunction blockbuster (almost $2 billion in sales last year) was recently granted an additional six months of U.S. patent protection because it is being tested in studies on children with pulmonary arterial hypertension.
The Wall Street Journal reported:
Viagra shares an active ingredient, sildenafil, with another Pfizer drug, Revatio, which is marketed to treat pulmonary arterial hypertension, or high blood pressure in the lung’s arteries.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration previously asked Pfizer to test Revatio in children with pulmonary hypertension. Pfizer conducted the studies and has applied for FDA approval to market Revatio for use in children; an FDA decision is expected in May.
Federal law provides for such extensions of exclusivity as an incentive for drug makers to test products that may be helpful to children. During exclusivity periods, competing generic copies are generally prohibited from entering the market. The FDA granted the six-month pediatric extension for sildenafil on Feb. 9, according to the FDA website.
In addition, Stanford University researchers think they may have found that Viagra helps kids with lymphatic malformation – a rare disease in which cycsts clog up their lymphatic system.
From sfgate.com:
Dr. Al Lane, a pediatric dermatologist at Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford, … stumbled
upon Viagra as a possible treatment for that child, a 5-month-old girl, by accident.
Sildenafil was first developed in the early 1990s to treat high blood pressure, but early clinical trials found that it was more useful in treating erectile dysfunction. Today, sildenafil is sold primarily under the name Viagra for erectile dysfunction, although it’s also used under the name Revatio to treat a rare form of high blood pressure involving the lungs.
About a year ago, Lane examined the infant girl, who had severe lymphatic malformation with growths that had swelled up in her chest and wrapped around her aorta. The pressure caused high blood pressure and, eventually, heart failure, so Lane gave her sildenafil.
The drug helped her heart problems – but Lane also noticed a massive reduction in the lymphatic malformation.
