The heart is deprived of oxygen during a heart attack, which can result to significant damage to heart muscle and tissue. Most patients would require treatment after a heart attack to repair the damage and improve their chances of survival.

Except for early repurfusion, no available therapy is truly effective in protecting or protecting heart muscle and tissue damage in the clinical setting.

Researchers at the Virginia Commonwealth University have tested on mouse models and compared nitroglycerin (a drug used to treat angina, or chest pain - a vasodilator, opens blood vessels in order to improve blood flow to a patient's heart) with two erectile dysfunction drugs -- Viagra® (sildefanil) and Levitra® (vardenafil) -- to determine the effectiveness of each for heart protection following a heart attack.

...Sildenafil and vardenafil reduce damage in the heart muscle when given after a severe heart attack. In contrast, nitroglycerin failed to reduce the damage in the heart when administered under similar conditions.

The research team led by Rakesh C. Kukreja, Ph.D., professor of medicine and Eric Lipman Chair of Cardiology at VCU, have studied a class of erectile dysfunction drugs known as phosphodiesterase-5 inhibitors as part of ongoing research into heart protection. Both sildenafil and vardenafil have been found protective when given before a heart attack under experimental conditions.

According to Dr. Kukreja:

"Erectile dysfunction drugs can prevent damage in the heart not only when given before a heart attack, as we discovered previously, but also lessen the injury after the heart attack.

The protective effects on the heart produced by these erectile dysfunction drugs may be potentially useful as adjunct therapy in patients undergoing elective procedures, including coronaryartery bypass graft, coronary angioplasty or heart transplantation.

Study results were published in the February issue of the Journal of Molecular and Cellular Cardiology -the official publication of the International Society for Heart Research.

Find more details from the full report.

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