Health article : Recent experiments prove Viagra improves fetal growth

The world of research is always full of surprises. Most of the time, you read the latest papers and, with a comfortable nod to human ingenuity, move on without a second thought. But every now and again, the research is quite extraordinary. You end up with your head more full of questions than answers. In this case, we have to travel to Texas where scientists working for Texas AgriLife Research have just published a study proving that the little blue pill helps the fetus in expectant sheep to grow bigger.

Now that gives you pause for thought, does it not! You get to wondering what inspired these men to undertake years of research pumping pregnant sheep full of erectile dysfunction meds. What was the intellectual leap of faith that made them link the control of erections in men with the development of the fetus inside a sheep? The link would be obvious if the research had been to treat the rams who were having problems in impregnating their ewes. So, to make sense of all this, we have to picture the scene inside the research unit. They are looking at a herd of pregnant sheep.


The growth of some of the fetuses is slower than it should be. The reason? The flow of blood from the pregnant ewes to the uterus is constricted and not enough of the nutriments essential for normal growth is getting through to the fetal lambs. So one researcher turns to another and says, "What do you think would happen if we gave these ewes little blue pills?" Although you may smile in disbelief, this is exactly what must have happened. The little blue pills act on the umbilical cord in the same way as the arteries leading into the penis. Both dilate and increase the flow of blood. In the case of the ewes, this literally allows the lambs to resume normal growth.

What was too small does become big. Better still, full size lambs survive when born. Undersized lambs tend to be stillborn or die shortly after birth. This saves the farmers a lot of money because more animals survive and grow into our food.
Well, the next obvious question is whether what works in the sheep will also work in pregnant women. The researchers, of course, hold up their hands asking for calm. There is much work still to be done. They will have to start working their way through the species with animals of increasing size and complexity. But the lure is clear. Babies born prematurely or underweight may not survive. Even if they do, they are more prone to illness as they grow older. If the use of viagra might help pregnant women at risk of premature birth or encourage growth when the ultrascan shows an underdeveloped fetus, this will be a major advance and reduce mortality rates.

There is something pleasingly ironic about this. Just as viagra came into this world to help men get better erections so they might get women pregnant, it should develop into a way to help their babies grow bigger and healthier both in the womb and after birth. If this was to happen, it would genuinely complete the circle of life and produce the best possible result for this research. In that case, it would not matter why the researchers were inspired to work on sheep. Parents could just be glad they did.

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