Research Into Woman’s Viagra?

Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder. A social psychologist at University College London. A professor in reproductive biology at case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. Desire and it’s Effects on Female Sexuality Including Relationships. BioSante. Over-medicalization of sex. Boehringer Ingelheim.

Believe it or not, whether you know these names or not, they all have something in common. And it could be worth billions. What is the common denominator in all of this? It is the next Viagra, only for women.

All these entities list however are not only for it, there are also a few against it. The arguments are valid on both sides depending on how you look at the research, or better yet what they tell you about the research. You can read lots of research on the topic of women’s sexual health, but it would seem much of this research is performed by the pharmaceutical companies which can be biased. Only targeting research to get the answers they need.

Other organizations want them to make full disclosures, but since the research or surveys are funded by the researchers, they in effect own the data. On the other side of the research there are women’s advocates with a compelling argument of their own. Women’s supposed “ED” problem is more than a physical issue; it is a mental issue as well. And they argue that big Pharma creating a new syndrome for women could increase the problem by applying more stress on a woman believing she now has a medical condition.

Lisa Martinez, founder of the Women’s Sexual Health Foundation, said this, “A medication may be the right treatment, but it may not, depending on what is truly the cause of the low desire. If a woman is exhausted and stressed and needs help taking care of the children, a pill is not the answer. The answer is to minimize the exhaustion and to get help with the children”.

But then Beohringer has happened upon flibanserin while investigating its potential as an anti-depressant found it had some libido increasing affects. So why not solve the stressed woman with medicine?

Is convincing women with a low libido a sound marketing campaign that could make women feel deficient? It certainly worked with the men and Viagra.

Marketing the issues that women have by defining them in medical terms with labels will more likely make them seem like they require and clinical response. BioSante seems to think that the market in the US alone could be worth two billion in annual sales. BioSante is currently working on a woman’s libido enhancer.

Beohringer released data from a European study
The Study was called Desire and it’s Effects on Female Sexuality Including relationships. It showed women with a low libido to have suffered personal and emotional impact from their sexual problems. A US commercial research organization is setting up HSDD (Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder ), a register of sorts to help scientists get a better grip on women’s sexual health.

The big hope is flibanserin for Beohringer, in a 6 month trial they showed they increased the number of satisfying sexual events from 2.8 percent up to 4.5 per month, where as a placebo only increased the statistic 3.7%.