Combining Therapies in Patients With Pulmonary Hypertension

Pulmonary hypertension is a rare but serious and often fatal disease.  The most commonly prescribed medication for pulmonary hypertension is epoprostenol given daily by intravenous infusion.  However, even on therapy, many patients do poorly.  Researchers conducted an open-label randomized study of 267 patients to determine whether a combination of sildenafil (Viagra) and epoprostenol could improve outcomes more than epoprostenol alone.  All of the patients in the study had been receiving intravenous epoprostenol for at least three months, and were randomly assigned either oral sildenafil or placebo for 16 weeks.  At the end of the study, patients given sildenafil could walk longer distances and had a longer period of time before getting worse than those given placebo.  Researchers concluded that adding sildenafil to epoprostenol therapy may improve some outcomes for patients with pulmonary hypertension.

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