Tuesday, 20 May 2008

Sexual Dysfunction

"Erec­tile dys­func­tion is al­ways a mat­ter of the heart, but new re­search sug­gests more than ro­mance is at stake. Two new stud­ies of men with type 2 di­a­be­tes found that erec­tile dys­func­tion was a pow­er­ful early warn­ing sign for se­ri­ous heart dis­ease, in­clud­ing heart at­tack and death.

One of the stud­ies al­so sug­gested cho­les­ter­ol-lowering med­ica­t­ions could cut the risk of heart prob­lems by about a third, and that Vi­a­gra and re­lat­ed com­pounds might of­fer si­m­i­lar pro­tec­tion.

Re­search­ers said the find­ings un­der­score that men should re­port erec­tile dys­func­tion to their doc­tors, and that treat­ment should fo­cus not only on the sex­u­al prob­lem but al­so on car­di­o­vas­cu­lar health. The re­search is pub­lished in the May 27 is­sue of the Jour­nal of the Amer­i­can Col­lege of Card iol­ogy."


"In a Hong Kong-based stu­dy, Tong and col­leagues re­cruited 2,306 men with type 2 di­a­be­tes, a fourth of whom had ED and none of whom had any signs or his­to­ry of heart dis­ease, vas­cu­lar dis­ease or stroke. The re­search­ers fol­lowed up the pa­tients for an av­er­age of four years. Dur­ing that time, 123 men died from or de­vel­oped signs of cor­o­nary heart dis­ease.

An en­su­ing anal­y­sis found that ED sig­naled a 58 per­cent in­crease in the risk of cor­o­nary heart dis­ease. Just one oth­er warn­ing sign was stronger, the re­search­ers said: spill­age of abun­dant pro­tein in the urine, which dou­bles heart dis­ease risk and sig­nals ex­ten­sive kid­ney dam­age"
From "Erectile woes may portend heart disease"

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