The Pfizer-manufactured impotency medication Viagra, is widely known in the modern day for it’s erection boosting qualities. But these qualities were only fortunately discovered after a group of pharmaceutical chemists at Pfizer’s research facility in Kent, developed Sildenafil (the active ingredient in Viagra) and originally intended it to be used as an aid for heart disease. However, it now appears Viagra is actually highly beneficial for the heart, in particular in instances where heart muscles are too stiff and the drug works to help the chamber walls  become more elastic by activating an enzyme that causes a protein called “titin” in myocardial cells to relax. This underlines how beneficial Viagra could be for people suffering from diastolic heart failure. Those with this condition have abnormally rigid ventricles (the heart’s main pumping chambers), that do not adequately fill with blood. The people responsible for the findings, include a team of researchers from the Ruhr University Bochum in Germany and scientists from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. They have published their findings in the medical journal Circulation. After testing their therapy on dogs with diastolic heart failure, they suprisingly found positive and promising results within just minutes. Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Linke of the RUB Institute of Physiology explained their findings from the animal studies, in relation to treatment in humans: “Of all the patients aged over 60 who are in hospital because of a weak heart, half suffer from diastolic heart failure. Although we know that the decreased distensibility of the cardiac walls is the cause, the disease cannot be treated properly with today’s medicines. If, for the first time, the drug is found to have a positive effect on heart failure, we would already have a molecular mechanism on hand to explain the effect”.