Wednesday, May 23, 2007

The little blue pill for jet lag...


Our blogger, Kelly Hills, posted this on blog.bioethics.net:
"Good news for frequent flyers heading east: Viagra appears to offset jetlag. Sadly, it seems to have no effect - at least on jetlag - for those flying west."

The article explains that the research study shifted the biological clocks of hamsters, by using low doses of Viagra and exposing them to a shifted light-dark cycle, but the article doesn't explore whether or not the drug was tested on both male and female hamsters. Considering that Viagra does work, at least for some women, in terms of sexual arousal by increasing blood flow, this jetlag effect should work at least in theory for women -- should make for an interesting follow-up study.

1 comment:

Kelly Hills said...

Per norm, male hamsters only.



...I seem doomed to cover all the science stories involving hamsters.