Nearly all medications have side effects. These side effects can be mild, severe or life-threatening, as was seen in the case of Vioxx. In some instances, side effects can result in an entirely different use for a drug or treatment. This is the case with two widely used medications: Viagra and Rogaine.
What are Side Effects?
Side effects are unintended and often undesirable effects experienced after taking a medication or treatment. For example, one commonly reported side effect of antidepressant medication is decreased sexual desire. Side effects vary from patient to patient. Additionally, a patient who did not previously suffer side effects from a medication may develop side effects without warning.
Rogaine
Rogaine is marketed as one of two medications approved by the Food and Drug Administration for hair-loss replacement treatment. However, Rogaine was not originally developed to treat hair loss. Minoxidil, the active ingredient in Rogaine, was originally intended to treat hypertension. However, one of its side effects was growing hair, which led to trials of minoxidil as a topical agent for growing hair on the scalp. When it was proven to be effective, the drug manufacturers applied for, and obtained, FDA approval to market the drug as a treatment for hair loss on the scalp.
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Viagra
Viagra was initially developed to treat angina. However, one of its side effects was a prolonged period of penile erection. This resulted in a complete turnaround in its prescription by doctors and in its marketing to the general public. The success of Viagra has led to the development and marketing of similar medications designed to treat male erectile dysfunction.
Vioxx
Until September 2004, when it was taken off the market, Vioxx had been one of the most successful and widely prescribed drugs of its type. Vioxx was developed by the drug manufacturer Merck as an alternative treatment for arthritis and joint pain. However, subsequent testing of the drug after it had been on the market for several years found that Vioxx presented an elevated risk of cardiovascular side effects, including heart attacks and strokes.
Side Effects and Future Research
A team of researchers at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory discovered in 2008 that similar drugs often share similar side effects because they target the same proteins and have the same modes of action. Researchers at EMBL developed a method that compares the similarity of the side effects of different drugs in hopes of finding drugs with beneficial side effects.
As promising as research such as this is, the results of these trials are not always positive. One example of a trial, which was halted in mid-2009, was for the possible use of Viagra to treat pulmonary hypertension in adults with sickle cell anemia. It had been hoped that the drug could provide an effective treatment but instead triggered severe side effects in the patients.
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