Victim of a severe form of Covid, a 37-year-old nurse received Viagra, as an experimental treatment. According to her, this is what allowed her to stay alive.
- Also called Sildenafil, Viagra is traditionally used against erectile dysfunction and pulmonary arterial hypertension.
- The nurse spent 45 days in intensive care.
Monica Almeida was close to death, and Viagra saved her life. This is what this 37-year-old nurse thinks, victim of a serious form of Covid-19, despite her double vaccination. “I have asthma and my air cells needed a little help“, she says in the British newspaper Tea Sun. The alveoli allow respiratory exchange, they are located in the lungs.
Viagra ‘saves’ nurse with ‘30% chance of surviving Covid’ by opening up airway https://t.co/ADOhDju631 pic.twitter.com/PJSrHwWdkU
— The Mirror (@DailyMirror) January 5, 2022
A severe form of Covid-19
Last October, she contracted the virus, and had to be admitted to hospital a few days later: after losing her sense of taste and smell, she started coughing up blood and then having difficulty breathing. The doctors quickly put her in an artificial coma. His condition is gradually worsening, to the point that his relatives, residing in Portugal, have been recommended to come and say goodbye to him in this British hospital. “They said my fan might be off in the next 72 hours“, says the thirty-something.
A drug used in a medical trial
Upon admission, the patient agreed to participate in a medical trial to test new drugs. A week after being placed in a coma, she received treatment with Viagra. “Within 48 hours it cleared my airways and my lungs started to respond.”, she says. Monica Almeida recalls that the drug is capable of dilating the blood vessels, and assumes that this is what allowed her to be cured. In any case, it is formal: “CIt was clearly Viagra that saved me.“Shortly after administering the drug, the doctors were able to reduce the oxygen supply by almost 50%. The nurse came out of a coma on December 14. At that time, the doctor, whom she knew, explains to her that she was treated with Viagra.”I laughed because I thought he was joking, but he said ‘no, you really got a lot of Viagra.”
She is not the only patient in the United Kingdom to whom this treatment is offered: when it may have an interest in the treatment of the disease, patients with Covid-19 can participate in this medical trial. Scientists are conducting this trial to find out if Viagra could be used like nitric oxide inhalations, to increase blood oxygen levels. For Monica Almeida, the blue pill was an unexpected cure. She was able to find her family for the end of year celebrations: she left the hospital on December 24. “It was my little Christmas miracle”she slips to the British newspaper.
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