The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently announced it had approved what many in the media have misconstrued as the first “female Viagra” medication. The approved drug is termed Addyi (generic name flibanserin.) It stimulates a region within the brain in order to raise a woman’s libido, where a woman has lost interest in sexual activity. The drug will be marketed at younger women. FDA approval followed two previous rejections. In granting approval, the FDA put in a caveat for heightened safety monitoring.
According to Forbes, the drug is conversational, with some criticizing the medication as a type of male suppression. Furthermore, its results are moderate: taking one pill a day for a month, studies indicated that women increased their number of satisfying sexual events by one a month from a baseline of 2 -3. By ‘satisfying’, this is based on self-recorded responses from the women who took part in the trial.
Nonetheless, the pharmaceutical world believes the drug is of value. As a result, the manufacturer – Sprout Pharmaceuticals – has been snapped up for $1 billion by Canadian corporate behemoth Valeant Pharmaceuticals. According to Pharmaceutical Manufacturing magazine, Sprout will be incorporated as a unit of Valeant, based in Raleigh, North Carolina, U.S.
Valeant CEO Michael Pearson told the Wall Street Journal that Valeant is better equipped than Sprout to build on the FDA approval and commercial potential, especially with introducing Addyi to markets outside of the U.S.
