Sildenafil may help diabetic patients

Daily doses of the anti-impotence drug sildenafil (Viagra) may reverse gastroparesis, a condition commonly associated with diabetes, a new study has found. Dr Christopher Ferris and colleagues at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, used mouse models of diabetes to find that defects in their gastric emptying were linked to failure of production of a common protein that can be supplanted by daily doses of sildenafil.

After studying diabetic mice with gastroparesis, the researchers found that these mice were unable to relax their pyloric muscles. This was probably respon-sible for their gastroparesis, the scientists …