Smokers less likely to react to Viagra-HK study
08/13/01
HONG KONG, Aug 13 (Reuters) - Anti-impotence drug Viagra may not be as effective for men who are heavy smokers, a medical study in Hong Kong showed.
The survey by Hong Kong's Kwong Wah Hospital involved 5,450 men who suffered from erectile dysfunction and received Viagra treatment over a two-year period starting in February 1999.
Sixty-seven percent or 3,651 patients in the survey were smokers. The others suffer from hypertension and diabetes.
Of the 926 patients who did not react to the blue pill, 840 or 91 percent were regular smokers and most had been smoking for more than 10 years. Most smoked more than 10 cigarettes a day and nearly half puffed away more than 20 times a day.
The findings, released on Sunday, prompted anti-smoking campaigners to call for harsher warnings to be printed on cigarette packets.
``We should include much more explicit health messages and warnings about the damage to many different aspects of sexual and reproductive health of both male and females,'' Anthony Hedley, the chairman of the council on smoking and health, told Reuters on Monday.
He believed young smokers would be more receptive to such warnings than notices about potential damage to the heart and lungs.
``Young people just simply don't project their future health problems and mortality very well,'' he said.
Health authorities in Hong Kong said some 5,500 people die each year from diseases commonly linked with smoking such as lung cancer, bronchitis, emphysema and certain types of heart disease.
Cigarettes
