A TUBE that props open tiny blood vessels may offer a new way to tackle impotence. The wire tube, or stent, is implanted inside the tiny arteries measuring just 1mm wide that supply blood to the penis.
The stent is designed to widen arteries that have become furred up as a result of atherosclerosis, where fatty deposits in the vessels restrict blood flow – which accounts for up to 80 per cent of impotence cases.
Crucially, these stents carry anti-rejection drugs in small pockets to stop the immune system from attacking them. New research shows that in eight out of ten men the treatment was successful.
Impotence – or erectile dysfunction – is defined as the persistent inability to achieve or maintain an erection. It is thought to affect more than half of men aged 40 to 70 within the UK.
Under normal circumstances, during arousal the blood vessels of the corpora cavernosa – sponge-like regions of erectile tissue that run along the length of the penis – open up, allowing blood to rush in.
The blood then gets trapped under high pressure, creating an erection. If the arteries are furred up, the flow of blood is insufficient for that to happen.
Treatment options include oral medication, such as sildenafil (sold under the brand name Viagra), which improve blood flow by widening blood vessels.
But up to 35 per cent of men on this sort of medication do not respond to treatment, or have insufficient erections for intercourse to take place.
Stents are widely used to prop open furred-up larger blood vessels that serve the heart. But arteries supplying the penis are much smaller, and previous attempts at using stents for erectile dysfunction have hit problems because the body views them as ‘foreign’ bodies, causing the healing mechanism to over-react. This triggers the formation of scar tissue that blocks the artery.
The newly developed stents are made from a cobalt-chromium alloy tube with a smooth, glossy surface. This is finished with spaces for sirolimus, a drug that reduces the risk of the rejection. In the trial of the new stent, reported online in the Journal of Sexual Medicine, 100 men aged 50 to 70 with erection problems caused by furred-up arteries had the stent implanted under local anaesthesia.
Clinical success – based on a symptom-scoring system – was recorded in 80 per cent of men.
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