Viagra developed heart trouble long before it was more high-profile fight erectile dysfunction may help treat the symptoms of muscular heart disease, researchers reported on Monday.

Experiments in mice genetically similar situation Duchenne muscular dystrophy showed the drug, the heart works by Giuseppe Beavoa University of Washington and improve his colleagues at the University of North Carolina found.

It is unclear how the drug helps mice, they reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, but said it would be worth trying as a treatment for muscular dystrophy.

Duchenne muscular dystrophy affects one in 3,500 men, according to the National Institutes of Health.

“Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) is a fatal genetic disease of progressive muscular dystrophy is. Ahdystropen DMD patients with mutations in protein expression by the lack of X-linked Dystropen,” write the researchers.

The participation of chromosome X, men are much more affected than girls and two copies of chromosome X, and probably a copy of the gene “spare” good health.

muscles of the body to break the patient grows, the heart of all. Many patients die of cardiac arrest and most of the disease before age 40 Age die.

Viagra, commonly known as sildenafil, Pfizer under the brand name Revatio for the treatment of erectile dysfunction and sold heart condition called pulmonary hypertension. called E ‘class of drug PDE5 inhibitors, which increase blood flow in different ways the work.

Team, working with NIH funding from nonprofit groups tested in mice that received Viagra heart damage similar to muscular dystrophy.