Friday, December 16, 2005

New unisex love drug uses inhaler

Welcome to another informative tip
By Corky Siemaszko

Viagra rejuvenated a generation of limp lotharios, but a new love drug called PT-141 could be as good for the goose as it is for the gander.

Just a snort or two from a nasal inhaler is enough to stoke up the sexual fires of both women and men, and often within minutes, Canadian scientists say.

And sexperts say the drug, which is undergoing final trials before beginning a federal Food and Drug Administration review, will be the boon to women with desire disorders that Viagra was for many impotent men.

"The bottom line is that women have been really shortchanged," said Laura Berman, Ph.D., author of "The Passion Prescription: Ten Weeks to Your Best Sex - Ever!"

"Hopefully, this will be another option for women with physiologically based sexual dysfunction."

Right now, the only real options for women who have lost that loving feeling are sexual therapy or a trip to the shrink.

"There's nothing in the arsenal now to treat female sexual dysfunction," Jim Pfaus, a researcher at Concordia University in Montreal who is working on PT-141, told the BBC. "That's one of the things that's really promising about this drug."

This is no Spanish fly.

PT-141 is a copy of the hormone that stimulates the melanocyte-receptors in the brain that play a role in sexual arousal.

Unlike Viagra, which gets the blood flowing in men, it goes straight to work on what the late Frank Zappa called the "ugliest" part of the body - the mind.

"It affects the central nervous system," said Berman. "It affects desire."

In lab trials, female rats exposed to PT-141 immediately began seeking out male rats for sex.

Women who took part in trials told New York magazine that within minutes they felt a "tingling and a throbbing" along with a "a strong desire to have sex." Men told the magazine a snort made them feel more energetic.

"You're ready to take your pants off and go," said one man.

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