Stendra is said to work extremely quickly!

After a long evaluation process the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has finally approved a new erectile dysfunction medication,Stendra, to compete with the existing drugs Viagra, Cialis and Levitra!

The new drug avanafil which will be marketed as Stendra is said to work extremely quickly and will be able to give most men full erections in under fifteen minutes.

Stendra is actually very similar to its rivals Viagra, Cialis and Levitra and works in exactly the same way by expanding blood vessels in the penile artery.

Stendra is the first new erectile dysfunction medication for ten years and could well steal a large section of the impotence drug market share currently shared by Pfizer, Eli Lilly and Bayer. Vivus Inc. who manufacture Stendra claim that it is definitely the fastest acting erectile dysfunction medication on market and say that while they recommend that it is taken half an hour before sexual intercourse, it is likely to be effective in fifteen minutes.

Having erectile dysfunction medications which work very fast is important for many men because they say that having to wait for the drugs to work can kill the spontaneity of sex and ruin the experience for both the man and woman. Waiting for an erectile dysfunction drug to work can increase the anxiety that a man experiences about his medical problem and this in turn adds to the likelihood of not being able to perform.

Stendra is not yet available in the United Kingdom but is likely to be approved soon by the EMEA. Side effects for Stendra are similar to the side effects of Viagra, Cialis and Levitra and include mild headaches, face flushing and nasal congestion.

Other erectile dysfunction medications which allow for spontaneous sex are Levitra Orodispersible and Cialis Daily both of which are available from the Ukmedix website following an online consultation with a UK doctor.

Vivus has been boosted by the news that regulators in the USA have given the green light to the firm's erectile dysfunction drug Stendra.

The US Food and Drug Administration has approved Stendra from Vivus (avanafil) for ED which affects about 30 million men in the USA.

The pill, which is a phosphodiesterase type 5 (PDE5) inhibitor, has been assessed in three Phase III studies involving 1,267 patients over 12 weeks; those on Stendra experienced statistically significant improvement in all three endpoints (erectile function, vaginal penetration and successful intercourse) for all three doses (50mg, 100mg or 200mg).

Victoria Kusiak, deputy director of the Office of Drug Evaluation III in the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, said the approval "expands the available treatment options to men experiencing ED and enables patients, in consultation with their doctor, to choose the most appropriate treatment". The three drugs available at the moment - are all PDE5 inhibitors - Eli Lilly's Cialis (tadalafil), Bayer's Levitra and of course Pfizer's Viagra (sildenafil).

Some serious competition, but one advantage for Vivus could be that Across all the Phase III studies, success was observed in some Vivus Stendra treated patients as early as 15 minutes after dosing, as opposed to 30 minutes for the other drugs.

On the other hand, getting market share (which is worth over $5 billion) could be tough given that the patents on Cialis and Levitra expire in 2016 and 2018, respectively, and generic Viagra is expected in 2019. In an investor note, Simos Simeonidis at Cowen & Co wrote: "Does anyone really need another ED drug? Probably not, but given the large market opportunity and the potentially differentiating faster onset of action, we believe that in the hands of big pharma, Stendra  is probably worth around $300 million.

He also reminded investors that "management's intent is to outlicense/divest Stendra".

Vivus confirmed that it is "currently in discussion with potential partners to commercialise Stendra", the first new prescription ED drug approved in nearly a decade.

The therapy is licensed from Japan's Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma Corp and is already sold in South Korea by JW Pharma under the brand name Zepeed. The Stendra approval comes as Vivus waits for final approval from the FDA (on or before July 17) for its obesity drug Qnexa (phentermine/topiramate). The combo received the backing of the agency's Endocrinologic and Metabolic Drugs Advisory Committee in February.

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