International drugs like Viagra and Cialis used for treating male erecticle dysfunction may shortly get their Indian counterparts from a `caterpillar fungus’ found in the high altitudes of Uttarakhand.

The caterpillar fungus locally titled as `Keera ghas’ or ‘Yarchagumba’ is said to have aphrodisiac attributes, which will be applied to construct drugs in a project taken on by the Uttarakhand politics, say the officials of the Herbal Research and Development Institute (HRDI) in Gopeshwar district.

“Yarchagumba, known as an aphrodisiac agent, has been practised in traditional forms of medicine for ages. Its application is about usual in the Chinese medicine system. Believing this we will undertake a project to explore drug manufacturing possibilities from Yarchagumba,” S.K. Singh, director of HRDI and additional secretary (herbs), told IANS on telephone from Gopeshwar.

The drug manufacturing project will be undertaken jointly by HRDI and the Forest Research Institute, Dehradun, officials tell.

“The joint project will likely be initiated in the next two months,” a senior HRDI official said.

Prior to undertaking the project, the state government has directed the forest section to ensure protection of the caterpillar fungus found in high altitude areas in the state.

“Owing to its therapeutic importance, Yarchagumba is in great demand. At times unscrupulous ingredients manage to sell the caterpillar fungus illegally to fetch a good amount of money,” said Uttarakhand chief wildlife warden Shrikant Chandola.

On the directive of the government, the van (forest) panchayats in the state have been tutored to take care of the caterpillar fungus. Now, only van panchayats are accredited to extract the caterpillar fungus, added Chandola.

There are as many as 1,500 van panchayats in the state, comprising local villagers who have been entrusted with the task of researching the therapeutic importance of herbs and protecting them.

Interestingly, the forest officials pointed out, a kilogram of the caterpillar fungus costs around Rs.300,000.

“Over the years, the price of Yarchagumba has increased drastically. Its market price around five years ago was Rs.150,000 per kilogram,” said Singh.

Earlier, the Pharmacists’ Association of Uttarakhand had approached the government, asking it to check the illegal exploitation of the caterpillar fungus in view of its medicinal importance.

source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/3102501.cms

Ephemeral global memory loss, or TGA, is a brief bout of amnesia, not lasting longer than a day, without doing other problems.

Levitra’s mark change isn’t a warning or a precaution, and it does not intend that the drug causes memory problems. The covered cases of transient global amnesia in men using up Levitra may have been goaded by something else, even by sex.

“Sex can activate TGA,” says Harvard neurology professor Louis R. Caplan, MD. He likens TGA to a tape recorder that’s not acting.

“People differently may walk and talk and read and do high-ranking things, but they are not recording the data, as if their tape recorder is off,” Caplan excuses.

Transient global amnesia “scares people” but it doesn’t affect function, long-term memory, or other views of health, Caplan says. “It isn’t a reason not to take the drug.”

Still, men who know transient global amnesia had better see a doctor to rule out sickness or injury, says Caplan, who is also an attending physician in the Comprehensive Center for Stroke and Cerebrovascular Diseases at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.
Not a “Warning” or “Precaution”

Transient global amnesia will join a list of other rare, covered adverse cases — including sight problems and unexpected hearing loss, which are mentioned for all erectile dysfunction drugs — in the “Post-Marketing” section of Levitra’s label.

Levitra’s label got the transient global amnesia note “because of a fixed number of post-marketing reports of men who experienced TGA” around the time they took Levitra, the Food and Drug Administration tells WebMD in an email.

Simply those reports don’t show that Levitra was to blame.

Bayer Pharmaceuticals and the FDA have agreed on the formulating of Levitra’s label change, Bayer Pharmaceuticals spokesman Mark C. Burnett tells WebMD by email. Bayer “perpetually monitors product safety reports and acts closely together with international regulatory authorities, including the FDA, to ascertain that suited product data is shared with doctors and with their patients,” Burnett says.
Transient Global Amnesia and ED Drugs

Caplan, a transient global amnesia expert, has seen many TGA patients, but simply one man who got TGA after taking an ED drug.

The patient, a 51-year-old adult male with a history of high blood pressure and migraines, had played golf in the morning. After returning home with his girl, he took Viagra.

“Later on 30 minutes, as he was just about to engage in sexual relation, the patient reported that he ‘felt weird’ … [and] could not remember that he had played golf that morning,” Caplan and colleagues wrote in Neurology’s Sept. 10, 2002, publish.

The man was hospitalised for a day. His memory step by step improved on that time, although he hadn’t recovered his ruined memories once he was discharged from the infirmary.

A couple of other cases of transient global memory loss in men taking erectile dysfunction drugs have been released in medical journals. Those events include a German man who had TGA after he obviously took Cialis, his doctors wrote in the International Journal of Impotence Research’s July/Aug 2005 topic.

None of the case describes confirm that ED drugs reminded transient global amnesia.
Cialis, Viagra: No Label Changes

The three erectile dysfunction drugs — Cialis, Levitra, and Viagra — consist to a class of drugs called phosphodiesterase type 5 (PDE-5) inhibitors. None has been pointed to cause transient global amnesia.

Simply Levitra is modifying its label to note reports of transient global amnesia. The Food and Drug Administration tells WebMD it can’t point out on whether the makers of Cialis and Viagra have been took to make exchangeable label changes.

Pfizer makes Viagra. “We can’t really speculate whether the Viagra label will be updated, but we surely do believe that the actual label precisely reflects the safety and efficaciousness of Viagra,” Pfizer spokeswoman Jennifer Jacob tells WebMD in an email.

Eli Lilly & Co. Builds Cialis. “Lilly typically doesn’t talk about potential label changes or regulatory action,” Stephanie Kenney-Andrzejewski, senior vice president for communications firm MS&L Global Health, says WebMD on behalf of Lilly in an email. Kenney adds that “Cialis keeps going to be a generally well-tolerated and effective treatment for ED,” with a safety profile backed by clinical research in more than 16,000 patients and many another than 11.5 one thousand thousand men worldwide who have been prescribed Cialis.