Babies Given Viagra For Lung Disease

Doctors are giving infants and babies the anti-impotence drug Viagra to save them from a life-threatening lung condition even though it has not been tested on children yet.

The drug, produced by U.S. pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, has already been used to treat a small number of children with pulmonary hypertension in India, the United States, Canada and Britain with promising results. “Critics have expressed serious concern at the fact that no clinical trials have taken place for this use of the drug and at the wide variation in doses used,” New Scientist magazine said in its online version.

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Although the drug is approved for the treatment of impotence, doctors have found that it helps babies suffering from PHT, which affects 28,000 children and 250,000 adults in the United States alone.  A spokesman for Pfizer said the company was considering using the drug to treat PHT, but could not comment on any clinical trails. Viagra was originally developed to treat angina by opening up blood vessels when doctors and patients discovered the impact it had on male sexual arousal.

Dr. PK Rajiv, of the Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences in Kochi, India, treated an 8-hour-old baby girl with the drug after other treatment failed. “The child recovered in 48 hours and within a week two other newborns survived the same treatment,” he told the said. Children may also react to drugs differently from adults. Determining the correct dosage for a baby could also be difficult and infants could be more susceptible to toxic effects because of underdeveloped kidneys and livers.