DOC­TOR'S NOTE with DR AMIR KHAN | AL JAZEERA

● There is no sci­en­tif­ic ev­i­dence that Vi­a­gra can be used to treat COVID-19 ●

(AL JAZEERA) — Most peo­ple will be fa­mil­iar with Vi­a­gra, oth­er­wise known as silde­nafil, for its use in treat­ing erec­tile dys­func­tion. But a nurse in the UK re­cent­ly claimed that the drug had saved her life when she was be­ing treat­ed for COVID-19.

Speak­ing to the British news­pa­per, The Sun, 37-year-old Mon­i­ca Almei­da de­scribed how she had been ad­mit­ted to hos­pi­tal on No­vem­ber 16 and placed on a ven­ti­la­tor af­ter her con­di­tion de­te­ri­o­rat­ed. She told the news­pa­per that she was giv­en Vi­a­gra, which opened up her air­ways and saved her life. Almei­da even­tu­al­ly left the hos­pi­tal on De­cem­ber 24.

So, can Vi­a­gra re­al­ly be used to treat COVID-19?

Well, we have to be very care­ful when dis­cussing any po­ten­tial treat­ments for COVID-19. We have seen in the past, with drugs like iver­mectin and hy­drox­y­chloro­quine, that peo­ple have tak­en them and caused them­selves harm be­fore stud­ies have shown them to be ef­fec­tive. Nei­ther iver­mectin nor hy­drox­y­chloro­quine has been proven to be ef­fec­tive against COVID-19 in sci­en­tif­ic stud­ies.

It is im­por­tant to note that while Vi­a­gra is avail­able to buy over the counter with­out a pre­scrip­tion in many coun­tries, there are po­ten­tial side ef­fects as­so­ci­at­ed with the drug. Some of the most com­mon are headaches, hot flush­es, vi­sion prob­lems and an up­set stom­ach. It can al­so ad­verse­ly in­ter­act with oth­er med­ica­tions. When tak­en by some­one who is al­so us­ing heart med­ica­tion, for ex­am­ple, it can lead to dan­ger­ous­ly low blood pres­sure and cause them to col­lapse.

There is a re­al dan­ger in even a small news sto­ry pro­mot­ing the use of a drug such as Vi­a­gra to suc­cess­ful­ly treat COVID-19. Two years of liv­ing through a pan­dem­ic has left many peo­ple in­cred­i­bly fear­ful of the virus and will­ing to try any­thing to pro­tect them­selves. With that in mind, it is im­por­tant to say that Vi­a­gra or any drugs re­lat­ed to it are not cur­rent­ly ap­proved for the treat­ment of COVID-19.

An illustration showing there was no one on the streets during UK's first lockdown in May2020. [Jawahir Al-Naimi/Al Jazeera]

Vac­cines pro­vide the best pro­tec­tion against coro­n­avirus. If you do test pos­i­tive for the virus, and feel un­well, re­gard­less of your vac­ci­na­tion sta­tus you should con­tact a health­care pro­fes­sion­al who can as­sess you and de­cide if your symp­toms war­rant any of the sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly proven treat­ments.

The more we learn about COVID-19 and how it af­fects the cel­lu­lar path­ways in our bod­ies, the more we can put for­ward new treat­ments to com­bat it. But every new treat­ment must un­der­go rig­or­ous test­ing and show clear ben­e­fits be­fore be­ing rec­om­mend­ed for use.

Vi­a­gra has been shown to be ef­fec­tive at treat­ing high blood pres­sure in the lungs, a con­di­tion known as pul­monary hy­per­ten­sion. And in 2020, a pa­per looked in­to the po­ten­tial ben­e­fit of us­ing Vi­a­gra to treat COVID-19 by ex­plor­ing the sci­ence be­hind it. Ac­cord­ing to the re­searchers, both bac­te­r­i­al and vi­ral lung in­fec­tions can cause wide­spread in­flam­ma­tion in the lungs. COVID-19 has been shown to do this. As in­flam­ma­tion sets in, it can dam­age the lung tis­sue, cause the for­ma­tion of blood clots and in­crease the risk of pneu­mo­nia. The study pro­posed that Vi­a­gra could po­ten­tial­ly coun­ter­act some of these ef­fects and want­ed fund­ing to in­ves­ti­gate this fur­ther. But it did not of­fer any con­clu­sions be­yond this.

Vi­a­gra is thought to in­crease the amount of a sub­stance known as ni­tric ox­ide, which can im­prove blood flow and cir­cu­la­tion to the lungs. A study in Chi­na is look­ing in­to the po­ten­tial ben­e­fi­cial ef­fects of Vi­a­gra on the lungs of those be­ing treat­ed for COVID-19 with oxy­gen rather than ven­ti­la­tion. They be­lieve it may open up the tiny blood ves­sels af­fect­ed by in­flam­ma­tion and im­prove cir­cu­la­tion and oxy­gen de­liv­ery to lung tis­sue.

Tri­als are con­tin­u­ing but there isn’t any firm ev­i­dence yet to sug­gest Vi­a­gra should be used to treat COVID-19. For the nurse in the UK, it is like­ly that it was the com­bi­na­tion of med­ica­tion and care she re­ceived from NHS staff that saved her life rather than any sin­gle treat­ment. So, un­til we have ro­bust sci­en­tif­ic ev­i­dence that Vi­a­gra can be used to treat the virus, peo­ple must not be tempt­ed to buy it to self-med­icate.