Male erectile dysfunction: therapy and drug delivery.
Finding an ideal chemical agent or a user-friendly delivery system for the treatment of male erectile dysfunction (MED) has been the goal of several research groups. The most suitable therapy for erectile dysfunction (ED) in man would involve a chemical that acts directly or indirectly on the penis and assures erection without any side effects. The understanding of ED has grown tremendously over the last decade and has been accompanied by an impressive proliferation of new therapies, ranging from traditional therapeutic agents to novel agents and drug delivery systems. Before Viagra, the most effective therapies involved injecting drugs directly into the base of the penis and inserting suppositories into the urethra, but these were too invasive to achieve great popularity. Although ED was not an area of pharmaceutical research that many companies were focused on, the success of Viagra has shown that there is a huge market opportunity for this indication. Financial analysts project a worldwide market of approximately $2 billion for oral ED treatments. This review presents a general overview of the present state as well as the future directions of research to treat MED.
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Mylan Pharmaceuticals Inc, 781 Chestnut Ridge Road, PO Box 4310, Morgantown, WV 26504-4310, USA. Sarat_c82@hotmail.com