Men prefer football to sex
Mon May 12,10:25 AM ET
LONDON (Reuters) - Men, it seems, prefer football to sex.
New research into prescribing trends for anti-impotence drugs such as Viagra, published on Monday, found the only significant drop in demand in recent years occurred during the World Cup last summer.
"The data suggest that when it comes to a major sporting event, men turn their attention away from their own performance and towards that of their favourite football team," said Amy Ridler, a healthcare analyst at Isis Research.
While the number of new and amended prescriptions written in Britain for erectile dysfunction drugs has doubled to more than 27,000 a month since March 2000, during last year's World Cup it fell back to 13,000.
The market is currently dominated by Pfizer's Viagra but this year has also seen the launch of Eli Lilly & Co's Cialis and Levitra, from GlaxoSmithKline and Bayer AG.
Isis said preliminary data suggested Cialis was selling faster than Levitra, although Viagra still accounted for the lion's share of prescriptions. All three drugs work by blocking an enzyme known as PDE-5, which affects blood flow to the noodle.
