Mt. Whitney Portal Store & Hostel Forums General Mt. Whitney Portal Store Message Board Diamox and Viagra

Does anyone have direct experience with taking the combo Diamox and Viagra? Seriously now. ..I've noted it's occasional use as a firstline pharmaceutical in HACE; however, have no hard data of any prophylactic use.
Cheers,
Michael Dong
Expedition Adventures

Why would you use both? If I'm not mistake, both are vasal dialators plus Viagra is is being tested for AMS and the like.

Bill

Actually, Diamox is a carbonic anhydrase inhibitor, which brings me back to the original post question. Thanks for the input.
cheers, Michael

Michael, Viagra is, as far as I know, only *proposed* as a preventive treatment for HAPE, due to theoretical issues with it's mechanism of action. I have not yet seen any scientific studies of it's use in a controlled situation. As you know, Diamox is well established as a drug to accelerate acclimatization.

The only reasonable way to know anything about the use of the combo, would be to place people on both who had a previous predisposition to HAPE, then run them up the hill faster than usually recommended, while carefully monitoring various factors. Seems like a dangerous thing to do, and probably why it has not been done.

Thanks guys for the input. The theory came about while on a patrol, and the follow-up will indeed be studies on human subjects (not running up a mtn, but by VO2 in a lab setting.)
The interest involves HACE, not HAPE, although that idea has some draw to it.
Hackett is doing some work on this, and Dow in AK. may be able to shed some new light.
If anyone's curious, I can correspond with them off-post.
Cheers, Michael Dong

Out of curiosity, what's the proposed mechanism of action of viagra for HACE? The potential use in HAPE is obvious given the current thought as to etiology, but I wasn't aware of the same extent of vascular constriction in the cerebral blood flow.

And also, how is measuring VO2 or peak VO2 going to help you with HAPE? Would it act similarly to other causes of pulmonary edema? I suppose I must sit down with my pulm exercise physio texts a bit more.