Why didn't Viagra become popular among men for women?

 Why didn't Viagra become popular among men for women?

Viagra went on sale in 1998 and almost immediately became the best-selling drug.

 The "blue pill", accidentally discovered by the American pharmaceutical company Pfizer, became a huge money-making machine for them. In the first three months alone, Americans spent an estimated کروڑ 400 million on penile erection.

 It didn't take long for the industry to see an opportunity to focus on the other half of the market, women, and to double its profits, and they started working on that as well.

 Nicole Prouss, a neuroscientist and researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in the United States, recalls: There is a lot of investment in sex research.

 "We have never seen the scope of this research. Our science (sexual physiology) is still quite backward, it is considered a dangerous area. There are a lot of companies that don't even want to talk about it.

 However, after spending nearly 25 years and millions of dollars, the pharmaceutical industry has not yet been able to develop a female version of the "blue pill" for women.

 This is a failure that has led to a major debate on women's sexuality, as experts say that what is generally considered a taboo subject about women's desires and sexual pleasure (libido) and It also tells a story about misunderstandings.

 Searching for 'Pink Pill'

 The history of Viagra for men is well known. Dr Mitra Bull, who works at Pfizer's research division in the UK, told BBC Brazil that the drug used to improve penis function today was discovered by chance.

 "We were preparing a medicine for angina, which is a heart attack. At that time, some participants in the clinical trial began to report erectile dysfunction. At first we didn't pay much attention, we thought it was because the participants were young

The decision to investigate further was made after an article published by American researchers stated that one of the components of the drug they were testing (called a PDE5 inhibitor) How the corpus callosum of the penis (arteries of the clitoris) affects the tissue which increases the blood circulation in that part.

 "My boss asked me to do some research to find out if this was really the case or if it was an accident," recalls Dr. Bull.

 Subsequent research on Viagra has shown that it has the potential to cause increased blood circulation around the penis and keep it standing longer.

 And the pharmaceutical industry's first approach to making its efforts to make Viagra for potential women was based on exactly the same principle, that is, to make a drug that would increase blood circulation in the vagina and clitoris.

 "The tissues that make up the male and female sex organs are identical in the early stages of fetal development," says Dr. Bullill.

 These tissues are different because they are formed by the production of hormones, but the stem cells that make up the sex organs are essentially the same in males and females, and the enzyme phosphodiesterase type 5 (PDE5) is also present in the tissues. Is. We thought, "Well, if it works for men, then it's more likely to be effective for women."

 But that was not the case.

Tissues of the human body

 Physical examination even showed an increase in blood flow to the vagina and clitoris, but neither control group participants nor Viagra users reported any improvement in sexual function.

 Other drug makers who conducted similar research had the same problem, not surprisingly, sexual physiologists who were already investigating how blood flow works in the system of sexual gratification and pleasure. Is.

 It was scientist Nicole Prouss who was involved in one of the many ongoing Viagra projects for women in the United States at the time.

 Increased blood flow to the genitals is also part of a woman's sexual response. When a woman is sexually aroused, the body increases the blood flow to the vaginal walls and clitoris, which makes it bigger, as in Libya Maura, a process called vasocongestion. ۔

 The problem is that many times women do not even realize that this is happening.

 "We've been studying this for years, and it's not easy for women to diagnose vasocongestion on their own," says Prous. So we knew we had a chance to do something about it, and women reported that they didn't really feel it. "

 Lori Bruto, a professor of gynecology at the University of British Columbia in Canada, says most women's sexual problems are not related to inadequate blood flow to the genital area.

 The most common of these is loss or loss of sexual desire.

In men, meanwhile, Viagra does not work without desire and requires a brain 'function' for a penis. The central question in this case is that the method of expressing desire is very different between men and women.

 According to Pruss, although this was already clear to many scientists involved in researching female Viagra, many pharmaceutical companies ignored the warnings because of their sales potential. "We warned them it would not work (in women)," she repeated.

 Pruss joined one of the Viagra discovery projects for female graduate students in the early 2000's. Pruss was surprised to learn that she was the only female researcher on the Viagra project for women, while the rest were male researchers over the age of 50.

 However, she says that the research participants were there with the best intentions to help women, but still, they felt that there was no reasonable discussion about how women reacted sexually and how. happens.

Failure of the first study

 Dr. Bullill agrees that the pharmaceutical industry should have "listened more to women." Gave a series of

 At the time, Dr. Bolel said, "During sexual intercourse, many women lose the connection between changes in the genitals and changes in the brain, while such a disconnection does not occur in men." Men constantly fall prey to the idea of ​​erectile dysfunction in the presence of naked women and want to have sex. Dealing with women depends on a number of factors.

 After the failure of the women's project, pharmaceutical companies gradually stopped spending money on it and the flow of ample funding for research on sexual physiology also ended.

 Pruss, who at the time was a research associate at the University of California's Department of Psychiatry, faced internal resistance to continue research on 'lust' and depression.

 Despite receiving funding from private sources for her own research, the university told her it could not accept the money, a position she attributed to the "controversial" nature of her research.

Pros says many companies tarnish the image of anything related to sex

 "There's still a lot of stigma attached to anything about solving women's sexual problems," says Prous. One pill is considered "acceptable" but many companies tarnish the image of anything sexually explicit, that is, something that can be viewed as pornography is highly resistant.

 New condition: antidepressant medication

 Nearly two decades later, a pharmacist did not abandon the Viagra plan for women, but instead focused on another organ, the brain.

 In 2015, a company called Sprout launched Flibanserin, a drug that affects women's brains, a drug that was originally used as an antidepressant. Was developed to target levels of the hormones dopamine and serotonin with the promise of increasing women's libido.

 Experts have criticized the drug. First of all, its effectiveness was low, it is considered a low-grade drug. When comparing the results of the placebo group in the clinical trials, the participants had an increase in the number of sexual acts during a month, the rate ranging from 0.5 to 1.

 Many people thought that the benefit was not equal to the amount spent. Unlike Viagra, flibanserin needed to be taken daily and can cause dizziness, fatigue and nausea and should not be used by women who drink this alcohol as it is a daily food, so whatever He decides to take it. He should stop drinking.

Initially developed as an antidepressant, flibanserin was launched in the United States in 2015 under the name Addyi.

 The drug was even twice rejected by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) before it was approved. Sales of flibanserin never started. The drug is currently approved in some countries.

 Other pharmacological drugs, such as Vyleesi, a bramelanotide injection that was approved for use in the United States in 2019 for women with low libido in the days before menstruation, may also fail. Have done

 One of the reasons for the failure of the puzzle of sexual desire in women may be related to the fact that women have a psychological aspect of sexual desire. For example, it helps explain why less libido affects women more than men.

 Lori Bruto, a professor at the University of British Columbia, says depression, anxiety, stress, low self-esteem, relationship conflict, and partner embarrassment all interfere with women's desires more than men's desires.

 "Men also benefit from the effects of high levels of testosterone, which allows them to experience a more unnatural form of desire," she says.

The unadulterated desire for sexual intimacy has long been thought of as what it is, a desire that arises like hunger or thirst. The most advanced research theorists have worked on the study of women's sexuality, however, they call it the reciprocal sexual desire, which arises as a result of a stimulus.

 One of the scientists who introduced the concept in the early 2000's was Rosemary Basin of Canada. Things are not as easy for them and for a large group of scientists today as they are supposed to be.

 Traditional linear models, which emerged from studies in the 1960s and 1970s, ignore the fact that the key components of women's sexual satisfaction are trust, intimacy, respect, communication, love, and happiness in communication. Are connected to According to her, women's sexual response can be linear when they do not have a stable partner, for example, when they have just started a new relationship with someone.

 Women in long-term relationships experience a repetitive sexual response that includes desire and passion to think about sex, stages of the process that include emotional intimacy and psychological sexual stimuli. Are

 This debate is necessary not only to better understand women but also to differentiate between the issues that need to be addressed and the nature of women's sexuality.

Psychological problems interfere more with sexual desire in women than in men

 What if Viagra is not a pill?

 Lori Bruto, director of the sexual health laboratory at the University of British Columbia, is studying with positive results. Through practice, she says, women have been able to become more aware of the physical changes that take place before and during sexual activity - sensations such as blood vessel blockage or 'tickling' that are common. But produce sexual urges - which can help them increase or maintain sexual desire.

 "We've seen that mindfulness also works on a large number of negative thoughts that women with sexual problems have about themselves, lowering their self-criticism levels and increasing their self-empathy." Now the pharmaceutical industry has stopped looking for a pill that will solve women's sexual problems.

 "What I've noticed is that startups (new companies) are working on it with more innovative ideas, individually by a few scientists. Do you think any medicine can solve women's sexual problems? '

 "It would be sad if it was a bullet, right?" I think we (women) are more than that. Nowadays people want a pill for everything: a pill to lose weight, a solution to their sexual problems but the body is much more than that. We are the result of millions of years of evolution. The human body is an incredible machine and believing that one pill can solve all problems is a narrow idea.