Viagra For Women, Not So Fast!

Hey, ladies, take a beat before you start pilfering those little blue pills.

That’s the word from Dr. Ira D. Sharlip, a San Francisco urologist and president of the International Society for Sexual Medicine.

Although it may be tempting to act on news that the drug sildenafil, sold as Viagra, may ease the sexual side effects of antidepressant medications, swiping your husband’s stash or turning to Internet sources could be disappointing — or even dangerous.

“Any woman or man who is taking nitroglycerin drugs cannot take Viagra, Levitra or Cialis; it could be fatal,” Sharlip said, referring to other brand-name erectile dysfunction drugs. “I wouldn’t in any way advocate self-medicating with a drug like Viagra.”

New research showing that taking sildenafil significantly improved the ability to achieve orgasm in women suffering from sexual dysfunction caused by antidepressants could be important in a country where 180 million prescriptions for antidepressants are filled each year, mostly for women, and sexual dysfunction is reported in between 30 percent and 70 percent of patients.

However, Viagra didn’t do much for boosting women’s dampened desire, the study showed.

That’s no surprise, Sharlip said. Erectile dysfunction drugs work the same in women as they do in men: by increasing blood flow to the genitals and relaxing the walls of vessels. They don’t directly affect sexual desire. And sometimes, it’s hard to separate the two.

“The percent of women whose sexual dysfunction is due to specific blood flow is very low,” Sharlip said.

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• What Malaysian women believe about Viagra: a qualitative inquiry.