Pfizer is a well-known and established name in the pharmaceutical industry, and in the UK is in fact the largest medical supplier to the NHS. According to their own statistics, over 2.7 million Britain’s take a Pfizer medicine every day. They are behind some of the most common brands that we all know, use and trust, such as Benadryl, TCP, Listerine, and Calpol.
Viagra’s story begins in the UK at Pfizer’s largest English research site at Sandwich, Kent. Over a 1000 compounds were tested for use in the treatment of hypertension (high blood pressure) back in 1986 and only one was selected for further trials in 1989, which was known as UK-92,480. On clinical tests on patients in Wales, UK-92,480 was given to see if it helped with their high blood pressure and related problems. It didn’t have much of an effect on their conditions, but an observation from the group taking the highest dose led to a whole new direction for the compound – this test group reported frequent penile erections. This was a simple observation and it was some time before the full potential of this information was realised.
Twenty years ago when these studies were taking place, erectile dysfunction was thought to be mostly psychological, so the thought that many cases could be in fact physiological was something of a radical breakthrough in medical thought. This could mean that it could be easily treated, as was demonstrated by the trials on UK-92,480. Also, at that time the incidence of erectile dysfunction was under-estimated so Pfizer was in some doubt as to whether pursuing research to develop UK-92,480 to treat erectile dysfunction would be worthwhile. This underestimation could also have been due in part to men being reluctant to see their doctors if they experienced erectile dysfunction, as there were no reliable methods of treatment or cure.
Studies started in 1993, and almost immediately, positive results were coming in from the trials using this compound to specifically solve erectile dysfunction issues, and volunteers were flocking to take part. Over 3000 subjects were given Viagra during this initial testing, and over the next couple of years 21 different clinical trials took place using placebos and blind tests.
Scientists from the Pfizer research centre in Sandwich were given the prestigious French Prix Galien award in July 2001 for their discovery and development of Viagra. This was in recognition of the introduction the ground-breaking, easy to use, effective drug that successfully helps the millions of men worldwide that have erectile dysfunction and provides a great improvement to their and their partners’ quality of life.