Sexual dysfunction

HealthWise After blue, pink pills for a colourful life

NOW HERE’S an argument that decisively supports keeping things simple. If you are a man with a flagging libido, all you need to do is pop the little blue pill — Viagra, for the ignorant and the colourblind — to bounce back into the action.

Women have no such option and here’s why Scientists claim sexual dysfunction in women is a multifaceted disorder that includes anatomical, psy- chological, physiological and social- interpersonal aspects. Simply put, whether women are in the mood for sex depends on how they look, how great they feel, how healthy they are and how much they like their partner. That’s too many hows, more so compared to what men want (usu ally just a big pair of knockers).

Early clinical trials using derivatives of sildenafil (Viagra), too, found no response in women, prompting scientists working on the pink pill for women to throw up their hands some years ago, saying female sexuality was too complex to be treated with medication alone.

Since then, patches for women that work by releasing the male hormone testosterone through the skin into the bloodstream have been made available, but have not quite caught people’s fancy For one, they are .

cumbersome: about the size of an egg, the patch has to to be stuck just below the navel and changed twice a week. Pills are any day simpler.

The good news for women in blue funk is that new studies in animals indi- cate that male impotence drugs may deserve a second look in women. Three drugs used to treat male impotence also appear to work in females, although a little differently, and could have the potential to treat the 40 per cent of women who report sexual dysfunction.

In one of the first studies of the effect of phosphodiesterase Type 5 inhibitors — sildenafil (Viagra) and vardenafil (Levitra) — on the arteries that supply blood to the penis, vagina and clitoris, Medical College of Georgia researchers showed the drugs relax the artery in male and female rats. The findings were presented in the scientific sessions of the Annual Meeting of the American Physiological Society this week in New Orleons.

They found one distinction: female rats responded better to sildenafil (Viagra), while males were most sensi tive to vardenafil (Levitra).

That apart, they also found that while the arteries from male rats displayed a relatively standard concentration-depend ent relaxation – the more drug they got, the more they relaxed — females arteries showed initial relax ation then oscillation between relaxation and contrac tion with sub sequent dos ing. Whoever said female sexu ality was complex, had it, well, bang on.

Sexual dysfunction in both men and women is usually caused by vascular problems because of diabetes, hypertension and high cholesterol, which is the reason why these medicines are meant to be had only on prescription. But when it comes to sex, people tend to throw caution to the winds. Take Viagra, for example. Around 60 per cent men who use it are believed to have no erectile problems. They just use it to add an extra zing to their sex life.

Whether it works, I wouldn’t know.

I’m a mere woman ruing the complexity of my gender.

LITTLE WONDER

Premature twins born little bigger than a human hand go home in the pink of health

BORN WEIGHING 599 gm and 694 gm, the Mehra (name chan ged) twins were bare ly larger than a human hand at birth on January 21. They weighed less than one-fourth of the normal birth weight of 3 kgs because they arrived unexpectedly, three months earlier than when they were supposed to, on April 30.

The babies were born after 25 weeks and four days of gestation. Full-term babies usually come after 38 to 40 weeks.

The twins — the older boy weighing 599 gm and girl, 694 gm — have not only survived but have left for their Vasant Kunj home from Delhi’s Fortis La Femme in the pink of health last week.

Their mother Natasha, 39, (name changed) is thrilled that her babies are feeding well, gaining weight (they now weigh 1.3 kg and 1.36 kg respectively) and crying loudly indicating healthy lungs. “I , had a difficult pregnancy and the twins were born in the second trimester. They were so tiny that I was scared to touch them,” she says.

Fighting infection was the biggest challenge senior neonatologist Dr Raghuram Mallaiah faced when the babies arrived in the neonatal ward. “They were about the size of a human hand.

Babies this small have no immunity, so to cut down risk of infection, we took them off the ventilator within 24 hours and put them on non-invasive ventilation,” he said. The twins were, however, given steroids to help their lungs develop naturally and antibiotics for two months to fight infection.

Their extreme prematurity prompted doctors to screen them extensively for development abnormalities. “Three ultrasounds showed everything was normal,” says Dr Mallaiah.

Though the twins are a week older than Baby Jagjit Kaur, India’s earliest recorded birth on June 13, 2008, at Ludhiana’s Satguru Pratap Singh Apollo Hospital, they weighed far less than Kaur, who weighed 850 gm at birth.

“It was a complicated pregnancy from the start but someone had to do it. Births in the 25th week are rare and there is a 50 per cent chance of losing the babies, but we did our best. Now both are as healthy as full-term babies,” said gynaecologist Tripat Chaudhary, who delivered them.

No baby born before 23 weeks has survived, according to the University of Iowa, which keeps a record of the world’s tiniest babies. The only miracle child was Amillia Tayor.
LITTLE WONDER
Amillia Taylor, now two, is the world’s tiniest and most premature living baby. She was born after 21 weeks and six days of gestation ¦ When she was born on October 24 in 2006 at Baptist Children’s Hospital in Miami, US, Amillia weighed just 283 gm and measured 240 cm, slightly longer than a ballpoint pen ¦ No baby born at less than 23 weeks was previously known to survive, reports the University of Iowa, which keeps a record of the world’s tiniest babies