Back in the pre-Viagra age, men were in fact powerless. Now, the guy with a mechanical problem suffering from erectile dysfunction (ED in ubiquitous TV commercials), clearly one of the most successful efforts rebranding Big Pharma. But women were denied a metamorphosis similar to a sexual problem because nobody has yet understood why some people want all the time and others hardly ever. If you're too tired, you're just cold.
This may change with the announcement this week that the pill appears to increase sexual desire in women with low libido. This blockbuster potential, developed by the German drug maker Boehringer Ingelheim, is called flibanserin and he was almost doomed to failure when it was first tested as an antidepressant. Flibanserin did not lift the mood, but researchers have noticed that it had an intriguing quality: it appeared to increase sexual interest in animals and humans.
Could it be Big Pharma Holy Grail: a female Viagra? Undoubtedly inspired by the enticing possibility of Gazelle Global Sales, Boehringer paid for flibanserin clinical trials in nearly 2,000 premenopausal European, American, Canadian and women who suffer from HSDD, a controversial diagnosis that affects apparently as more in four women.
The results, presented earlier this week at the Congress of the European Society for Sexual Medicine in Lyon, France, showed that women in the trial who took a daily dose of 100 milligrams of flibanserin for about six months has increased the number of "sexually satisfying events" (not necessarily an orgasm) to an average of 4.5 against 2.8 in the North American arm of the trial, compared to 3.7 among women on placebo group.The have flibanserin also said they were more interested in sex than those taking a placebo.
Flibanserin will not be on sale anytime soon. Boehringer still needs approval from the FDA and other regulatory agencies around the world, a process that could take years.
However, the announcement has already ignited the smoldering debate over the causes and definition of sexual dysfunction in women. Investigators sex (mostly men) used to believe that women were healthy, just like them, always on the lookout for the moment. Women who have experienced a constant stream of sexual desire were considered abnormal.
But in recent years, female researchers (including the University of British Columbia psychiatrist Rosemary Basson) arrived at a conclusion very different. Basson and her colleagues found that although male sexual progression is essentially linear - desire to arousal to women's sexuality - orgasm is rather circular, with a positive factor (such as emotional satisfaction or of privacy) by strengthening others and ultimately lead to the desire and excitement.
A woman is like a man earlier in a relationship, when it is full of sexual arousal on a new lover. But women in long-term relationships tend to need more stimuli, and that means a guy who meets emotionally (doing the dishes is always useful) as well as physically. May as women turn away from sex because of a large number of disorders other than sex, including depression, alcoholism, hormonal problems, and even pain with vaginal penetration.
According to Boehringer, the women in the study suffered only flibanserin of HSDD, no other condition that may have hindered their sex drive. But this diagnosis is very controversial. To understand what this means, you must define a normal libido. Nobody really knows if the normal means who want sex once a day once a month or once a year. Sex researchers now say that the sex drive of a woman is dysfunctional if it is unhappy about this, if it causes personal distress. Therefore the estimate of how many women suffer from sexual dysfunction range from 9 percent to a high of 26 per cent.
This nuance may be lost if Boehringer finally wins the approval of flibanserin. It's a safe bet that at present there are already test marketing of brand names and a catchy new label for old frigid.
