Viagra For Babies? How Can Sildenafil Save Little Lives?

Viagra is known and used all over the world as the “manly” drug. Sildenafil citrate (generic name for Viagra) is the most-prescribed medication for erectile dysfunction in men (usually older men). But, surprisingly, men are not the only demographic that can benefit from the little blue pill. Recently, we’ve seen many instances where doctors used Viagra in babies. That’s right, babies can also use some of those magic pills, but not for erections

Viagra has been used to treat some extreme conditions in babies where other treatment options failed or were not available. For example, Lewis Goodfellow, a prematurely born baby at the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle, weighed only 1lb. and 8 oz. with one failed lung, which resulted in oxygen-deficient blood throughout his body. Doctors in the hospital had tried Viagra to improve blood circulation in the baby’s body, and it worked! The drug caused the blood vessels in the lungs to relax and dilate, and that just saved the little one’s life.

There are some other instances and conditions where Viagra had literally saved the life of a baby, especially those who were born with heart, lung and/or circulation problems.

That won’t be very surprising if you knew how Viagra works. Even though Viagra is touted as a sex drug, it actually does not directly address any sex organs or hormones in the male body. Sildenafil is a PDE5 inhibitor, which relaxes smooth muscle cells that line the wall of blood vessels in some parts of the human body. As a result, those blood vessels become wider allowing more blood to flow through them. In fact, it was accidentally discovered that Sildenafil helps men get an erection, when the Pfizer-manufactured drug was primarily tested and used to treat pulmonary hypertension (a high blood pressure condition), and stiff erections were reported as a side effect. Pfizer then decided to develop and market Sildenafil as an ED medicine under the brand name Viagra.