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*PWEEP PWEEP* Things-that-annoy-us Alert!


Gorax

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http://news.sympatico.msn.ca/Health/Conten...le=&abc=abc

*hits head on desk*




2014 Mod Edit: The above link doesn't work anymore, but I found a copy of the article here. For future reference:


Libido-lifting nasal spray could help women with sexual desire disorder
by: SHERYL UBELACKER

While men have such drugs as Viagra to give them a boost in the bedroom, there's really nothing on pharmacists' shelves for sexual disorders that commonly affect women. So a drug that makes female rats rev up their "Do it to me now" signals is offering hope for their human counterparts.
The drug, a synthetic hormone called PT-141, appears to work within the brain to fan the flames of sexual desire, says James Pfaus of Concordia University in Montreal, who began testing PT-141 on laboratory rats in 2001.
An estimated 30 per cent of North American and European women suffer sexual desire disorders, which include poor libido, low ability to become aroused, inability to have an orgasm and painful intercourse.
"Right now, there's nothing in the arsenal for women to treat a desire disorder," Pfaus, an associate professor of psychology and neuroscience, said in an interview from Montreal on Monday. "There's no drug out there other than estrogen, which carries with it - especially for postmenopausal women - its own problems. (Those include increased risks of certain cancers.)
"I think this is the first salvo in our efforts to be able to treat female desire disorder."
Pfaus's research team began testing PT-141 on female rats at the behest of Palatin Technologies, a New Jersey-based pharmaceutical company which hopes to get FDA approval for PT-141 in a nasal spray to help men with erectile dysfunction and women with sexual desire disorders.
Female rats injected with PT-141, which mimics a naturally occurring hormone in the body, increased solicitation behaviour around males, which includes hopping and darting, as well as running away, then coming back - a female rat's way of sending flirtatious "come-hither" messages, he said.
"Think of solicitation as an indication that the animal wants sex - now," said Pfaus, whose study appears this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"Obviously humans are going to do it a little bit differently. We may express it in our own very typically human way, but the neurochemical underpinning of that is probably very similar between the species."
Annette Shadiack, a director of research for Palatin, said from Cranberry, N.J., that unlike "vasodilators" such as Viagra - which increase blood flow to the genital area - PT-141 acts on centres in the brain to jump-start desire, which in turn can cause increased genital blood flow in men and women alike.
PT-141 could work for men with erectile dysfunction who can't take the Viagra-like drugs, either because they don't work for them or because of other health conditions such as hypertension, Shadiack said. The vasodilators can cause a drop in blood pressure, which could be dangerous in a man taking blood pressure-lowering medications, she added.
Palatin Technologies has done preliminary studies of PT-141 in women and more advanced studies in men. They hope to have approval for a nasal spray - so far unnamed - for men by 2007, she said. One for women could follow within the next few years.
The desire-enhancing spray did pose one potential problem for the Concordia researchers, which Pfaus said they included in their investigations: "What's to stop people from doing the old Spanish fly thing and putting PT-141 inside somebody's Dristan? Would the drug make animals like something that they don't like, or make them like more something that they would typically like?
"As it turned out, it didn't have any effect," Pfaus said. "So nobody's going to put this in the air supply at a club and hope they're going to have their proverbial orgy, because it's not going to happen.
"The end result here is the drug doesn't make you do something you don't want to do. When the circumstances are appropriate, it makes you want it more."
Still, Shadiack warned that PT-141 is not intended "as a magic bullet" to fix female sexual dysfunction, which she called an often complex disorder.
"We're hoping that PT-141 will be part of an overall therapy for these women to help break the vicious cycle . . . that would help put a woman on a more normal track."

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"The end result here is the drug doesn't make you do something you don't want to do."

Good.

Still, Shadiack warned that PT-141 is not intended "as a magic bullet" to fix female sexual dysfunction, which she called an often complex disorder.

Complex in the way that some women just refuse to call it one, and aren't bothered by it in the least, that is.

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fluffy_hime

I heard that stat in my Abnormal Psych class. I wondered at the time whether anyone had stopped to consider that if it's THAT common, it perhaps isn't a disorder at all, but a normal variation? No one except me apparently, and I'm not qualified to make changes to textbooks. :D

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30% of women suffer from a low libido?

Suffer?

*melodramatic voice* "Oh I'm so miserable because I don't want sex. Oh, woe is me. Whatever shall I do?"

(Sorry I had to say It)

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Live R Perfect

I can't see what all the fuss is about... its a drug for sexual women who need a helping hand. Just like viagra for men. Its not like they're suggesting that asexuals should take it to become sexual.

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Ummm...yes, you're right, Karl.

*is uncharacteristically humble*

I just think the word "suffer" is misused.

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ApolloSeek

This piece on MSN is nothing more than a journalistic report on some new

research. There is nothing anti-sexual about it.

If you are on red alert about this, please go to green.

The windmills are innocent. Please don't attack them.

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Cate Perfect

To me it sounds like those women are sufferig from society telling them they're supposed to desire sex more. I'd be interested in how many of them would be looking for a drug to increase their libido if they weren't continually receiving messages that they should want more sex.

Cate

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fluffy_hime

I'll have to agree with Cate. For the record, I wasn't on red alert.

Even if someone was irritated, you can't really blame them. The sex ads (Bob is the host with the most!), Viagra studies, and raunchy sit-coms do get old.

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ApolloSeek

The problem with the "30% of all women suffer from low sex drive"

statement is that there is no context in which to interpet it. The news

article gives no info on how this number was computed.

Let's look at it in a more sound, rational manner. Assume for the sake of

argument that the following holds:

(1) That sex drive can be measured accurately (see Note 1)

(2) That the measure of sex drive in (1) follows a bell curve (normal or

Gaussian probablity density function). (see Note 2)

(3) That reported complaints of low sex drive are related

to the level of sex drive.

Now compute the mean and standard deviation (SD's) of the sex drive

level. The generally accepted rule is if a data point is two or more SD's

above or below the mean, it is abnormal.

Adapting this rule to low sex drive persons means that if someone's

sex drive level is two or more SD's below the mean, they have low

sex drive. Consulting a probability table shows that only 5% of people

are like this.

There is another way of viewing this. Let's start at the center (mean)

and see how far below it we have to go to include 30% of all data. The

answer is 0.85 SD's.

This is far above the critical limit of 2 or more SD's below the mean-almost

a factor of two. Therefore the "30% of all women suffer from low sex

drive" figure needs to be examined carefully and in the right context.

Note 1-Let's not get into a debate over measurement right now.

Note 2-If you have enough data, a mathematical principle called the

Central Limit Theorom ensures that your data fit a bell curve.

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*pictures nasal spray...*

:shock: :? :oops: :? :roll: :? :x :? :( :? :o :? :| :? :?: :!: :? :evil: :evil: :evil:

eeewww?

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Dosn't really bother me that much. I won't be using it.

In fact, i looked up the patton and it's really cool....at least how it works

Anyway...my alert isn't going off...

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Just a random noting... 'simpatico' - as seen in the url of that site means 'nice and charming' using a masculine ending.

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But spelled Sympatico, it's an ISP that partners with Microsoft to provide an MSN/Sympatico home page. The word similarity is intentional, of course.

No alarms for me. Then again, I don't give a shit. Ever.

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fluffy_hime

Apollo, weren't you the one who said not to go to "red alert" and that the article wasn't anti-sexual? Why did you proceed to dissect the statistic?

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Apollo, weren't you the one who said not to go to "red alert" and that the article wasn't anti-sexual? Why did you proceed to dissect the statistic?

(1) For the sake of the truth

(2) Because I can do it.

(3) To help other a's see thru the crap.

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The only thing that ticks me off about this, or any other lbido drug is the "dysfunctional" aspect. In many cases (as seen on this forum) the choice is a personal one, not a disorder. It just enforces the idea that there must be something "wrong" with the asexual person.

Alternate ad - "Low sex drive? Who cares? F**k it, and just get on with your life (you'll probably enjoy it more anyway)! :wink:

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