Viagra eases lung pressure in patients.

Roughly one-third of adults with sickle-cell disease develop increased blood pressure in the lungs. This debilitating condition, called pulmonary hypertension, constricts lung arteries. The backpressure that results can lead to heart failure.

A preliminary study of sickle-cell patients with pulmonary hypertension suggests that they can benefit from sildenafil, a blood vessel dilator marketed as the impotence drug Viagra by the New York--based drug company Pfizer.

A team of government and university researchers identified nine women and three men who had this lung complication of sickle-cell disease. The researchers recorded the volunteers' performances on a 6-minute walking test and measured blood pressure within their lungs.

Each participant then began taking sildenafil pills daily.

After 6 months, blood pressure in the lungs of sickle cell patients receiving the drug had eased by an average of 18 percent. Also, the typical distance covered by volunteers in a 6-minute walk had lengthened by 20 percent, says Roberto F. Machado, a physician at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute in Bethesda, Md.

The findings suggest that sildenafil and other vessel dilators that show a benefit in the lungs could benefit such sickle-cell patients, he says.