What you need to know about the new direct marketing guidance note
Nadine Mather and Chloë Loubser
New drug for premature ejaculation
For men suffering from premature ejaculation there may be a new saviour in town. The new drug called Priligy is reported to triple the time a man can last in bed. It is currently not licensed in the UK, but is available and licensed for use in a number of other European countries.
The pill has undergone clinical tests on 6000 men before it was made available to the UK male population. The tests were conducted in Finland, Sweden, Portugal, Austria and Germany. Still it is only available on the internet in the UK, that too after a confidential online consultation with a doctor. It has been recently released on 27 April 2010.
Another study carried out on 2600 men found that the drug helped increase the duration of intercourse from 3 to 5 times. At the University of Minnesota an analogous study found that the duration of sex increased from one minute to three and half minutes.
Giving more control
The drug Priligy works by altering the level of serotonin in the brain. This helps give the men more control over the ejaculation. It is sold in packs of three and costs £76 or US$116 (about R870) for a pack of three 30mg tablets. The active ingredient Dapoxetine Hydrochloride is currently at the 3rd level of testing in the US and awaits approval by the Food and Drug Administration. Dapoxetine is an antidepressant similar to Prozac, Paxil and Zoloft.
The marketing campaign of Priligy has claimed that the drug may be successfully used by men in the age group of 18-64 years. The oral medication needs to be taken an hour to three hours before an intercourse to delay climax. It cannot be mixed with alcohol.
According to prematurehelp.com, a Priligy resource site, "Dapoxetine will be marketed in the US by Ortho McNeil, by Janssen-Ortho Inc. in Canada, and is currently being marketed in Europe by Janssen-Cilag; these are all units of Johnson & Johnson" The site does not mention when exactly the drug will be available in the US, Canada or Europe.
