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Article: Viagra Deaths Explained by New Understanding of Platelet Clumping.
- Article from:
- Ascribe Higher Education News Service
- Article date:
- January 9, 2003
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 AScribe. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Byline: University of Illinois at Chicago
CHICAGO, Jan. 9 (AScribe Newswire) -- Incidents of heart attack and stroke, some fatal, in a small number of men taking the drug Viagra have remained a puzzle. After all, Viagra, commonly prescribed for erectile dysfunction, was originally developed to prevent these conditions -- not only by dilating blood vessels but also by stopping platelets in the blood from clumping.
In fact, the drug does just the opposite, according to researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine. They found that Viagra, by elevating levels of a compound in cells called cyclic guanosine monophosphate, or cGMP, ...