But There COULD Be Side Effects...

There may be new hope for chronic jet-lag sufferers. Argentine researchers say they've seen encouraging results from test conducted on hamsters, that were given mild doses of an increasingly common prescription drug.

Reuters reports the hamsters given this "miracle" drug, called sildenafil, recovered from the effects of jet lag up to 50 percent faster than those rodents which did without. The results of the study were published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Scientists had to closely monitor just how much of the drug hamsters were given, however. You see, sildenafil is more commonly known by its trademark name... Viagra, the male anti-impotency drug marketed by Pfizer. And yes, the drug affects male hamsters in much the same way it affects male humans, the scientists wrote.

"...We used the intermediate dose for the rest of the experiments because at that dose animals did not manifest the effects of sildenafil-induced penile erections," wrote researchers Patricia Agostino, Santiago Plano and Diego Golombek, of the Universidad Nacional de Quilmes in Buenos Aires.

Despite the potential for -- well, if nothing else, social embarassment -- the drug does show promise as an effective means to combat jet lag. Viagra interferes with a key enzyme, which lowers levels of a natural compound in the human body that helps regulate its internal clock.

Hamsters that were given the drug recovered from "jet lag" -- simulated by turning lights on six hours early, to replicate an eastbound flight -- much quicker than other hamsters, report the scientists.

Scientists recorded the time it took for the hamsters to jump on their exercise wheels as the defining characteristic. The effect did not work on simulated westbound "flights," however, in which lights were turned on later than usual.

The scientists believe the effect can be duplicated on humans, at lower levels of sildenafil than are currently prescribed to treat erectile dysfunction. We hope so...

FMI: www.unq.edu.ar/, www.viagra.com