Twelve years have passed since Pfizer's little blue pill for erectile dysfunction, Viagra, hit the market. The pill became so popular and ubiquitous that subsequent attempts by drug companies to make a libido-booster for women invariably drew the moniker "female Viagra." Those attempts have failed, but today the Food and Drug Administration is considering approval for a new contender—a drug that has stirred up plenty of controversy. The drug is called flibanserin, and the company is a German one, Boehringer Ingelheim. The first problem with evaluating the daily oral pill is figuring out whether it really has an effect that appears in trials.
The flibanserin data involved about 2,400 women treated with either flibanserin or a placebo for about six months. The agency said the two groups showed an increase in their number of sexually "satisfying" events but didn't show a boost in a sexual-desire score. The "overall response rate... is not particularly compelling," the FDA said, even though many of the differences in response rates between the two groups were statistically significant [Wall Street Journal].
