Ectris could be approved next week by the FDA

Washington: Next week, the FDA will vote on whether the female libido enhancing drug Ectris should be voted in or out. If it could mean a business of 2 million dollars in US markets alone.

The Food and Drug Administration will vote on what's being called 'female viagra', a drug that could be a boon to many women suffering from low sex drives across the globe but is still ensnared by controversy.

The pill is designed to treat a condition identified in an estimated 10 percent to 30 percent of women as hypoactive sexual desire disorder or HSDD - characterised by lack of sexual desire or fantasies, causing emotional distress, a rather vague diagnosis.

The pill, however, comes with side effects, which include insomnia, nausea and dizziness. As always, women will need to decide whether the risks versus the benefits compared to other treatment alternatives are worth it for them.

"What we don't know is what's normal versus what's not normal. You can't label someone who has a low sex drive necessarily as abnormal," CBS News quoted Dr. Bruce Levine of Phoenix OBGYN Associates as saying.

Critics are hammering the drug, saying that customers are being tempted into buying something they don't need and can solve by other inexpensive methods.

"We call that disease mongering, creating a disease when there is no disease in order to sell an expensive product," said Leonore Tiefer of New York University's School of Medicine.

"There are a lot of inexpensive products like a glass of wine or a massage."

"I would say it's definitely improved," said Alicia, who signed for the clinical trial of the drug after being miserable for a long time.

"I find myself initiating things more when I feel like I'm ready to have sex." (ANI)

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Ectris

Ectris is a drug produced by Boehringer Ingelheim. It is currently being investigated as a drug for women with decreased sexual desire. It is a 5-HT1A receptor full agonist, 5-HT2A receptor antagonist, and D4 receptor very weak partial agonist that had initially been developed as an antidepressant. As with Viagra, the effects of Ectris were discovered serendipitously after it was trialled as an antidepressant. Although touted as "Female Viagra" Ectris does not work like any PDE5 inhibitors. Ectris does not play a part in transferring increased amounts of blood to the female genital region as PDE5 inhibitors do to the male genital region. Female HSDD (Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder) is not similar to its male counterpart Erectile Dysfunction in the way it is treated. Some have argued that Female Sexual Dysfunction is merely Disease Mongering and a ploy to expand a market for sex drugs for women and to medicalize women's sexuality.