Recent tests from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California may have come up with a new use for impotence drugs: treating brain tumors.
A research team from Cedars-Sinai looked specifically at Levitra and Viagra (you may have heard of them). Although the two drugs get a lot of press for their powers in the bedroom, it looks like they may have another power — with the ability to help a lot of people. In laboratory tests on rats with brain tumors, vardenafil (Levitra) and sildenafil (Viagra) were able to carry chemotherapy drugs safely past the blood-brain barrier.
Did you know? Levitra and Viagra were originally tested as heart drugs because they increase the blood flow in small blood vessels.
The blood-brain barrier helps keep harmful agents out of the brain — but can it tell the difference between something harmful and something strong intended to help (like chemotherapy drugs)? Brain tumors form their own version of a barrier, known as the blood-brain tumor barrier. Levitra and Viagra seem to affect the blood-brain tumor barrier while leaving the actual blood-brain barrier intact.
If the impotence drugs can actually carry chemotherapy drugs to the brain tumors without damaging healthy brain tissue, that’s a HUGE deal.
In the Cedars-Sinai tests, rats who received only the chemotherapy drugs lived an average of forty-two days. Rats who got chemotherapy drugs combined with Levitra, the average survival rate was fifty-three days. The particular chemotherapy drug used — adriamycin — was chosen because it is highly effective against brain tumor cells in lab conditions but struggles when it comes up against the blood-brain tumor barrier. When combined with the impotence drugs, adriamycin treatments resulted in smaller tumor size and longer survival.
Those are both very good things if you ask me. Human trials are probably a few years off, but this is very hopeful news.