Led by internationally respected physician Dr. Irwin Goldstein, San Diego Sexual Medicine is a multidisciplinary health care facility providing compassionate, state-of-the-art, evidence based clinical management for men and women with sexual health concerns.
All right if you’ve got young ones in the room right now might be a good time time to just kind of scoot them out for just a second today we’re talking about sexual health when you’re being treated for depression dr erwin goldstein from san diego sexual medicine alvarado hospital is here with a first look at a new medication that treats depression apparently without
Causing sexual side effects and this is huge because most people report having some sexual side effects if they take an antidepressant right right so erica thank you again thank you for doing all these things um so depression is very timely now i mean it gets dark so early and this the christmas season’s up all the stress and so depression is common 30 million
Americans actually take drugs for depression uh two and a half times more in women than in men caucasians more than minorities and over 40 more than younger so depression is common and the problem with treating depression is the drug that’s usually used called an ssri selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor causes sexual side effects in almost half of the users
Less interest less orgasmic intensity pain less arousal so a lot of people stop the medications even though they’re good for them because they don’t like having the sexual side effects so we’ve been looking for a drug that treats effectively the depression but doesn’t cause the the sort of problems sexually that people don’t want to have so up front comes this
New drug it’s called velazodone that’s its chemical name the the real name is vibrate v-i-i-p-r-y-d and in the study of 860 people in a double-blind placebo-controlled trial published and yours truly the journal of sexual medicine that only eight percent of people versus the 50 of people get sexual side effects this is a huge drug are there other side effects
Instead of the sexual ones people are finding you know there’s another side effect there are classic sort of ssri related uh non-sexual side effects for vibrate there’s some stomach stuff diarrhea nausea it’s actually relatively mild and you could take low doses and sort of work your way up to the real dose so that you can minimize the sexual side effects so i
Had a patient who desperately wanted to come here but i don’t know she couldn’t have the energy i’m going to speak for her okay so she was on a whole bunch of ssr agents and whole had a whole bunch of sexual side effects and came to the san diego mess san diego sexual medicine facility and we put her on vibrant uh so as she tapered off her drug we tapered into
Her vibrate and she had no depression and she had great mood and no sexual side effects wow and she was on it for six months and she sort of said okay i’m now going to get off the medication and see if i uh still need the depression medications she sort of still needed the depression medication went back on the vibrate she’s now one month on it her depression’s
Not there anymore and her sexual function is fabulous so on behalf of her we sort of are bringing this up there are some tips one can do because this is sort of a depressing time between sort of november and march where it’s dark early and the holidays are difficult for some people sort of depressing it’s the opposite of this potted pottery the energy that they
Had was fabulous but um so there are antidotes you can take actually viagra is a fabulous antidote for people with sexual side effects on ssris and it’s published in the journal american medical association the use of viagra there’s a a drug bupropion which is wellbutrin it’s a good antidote for ssri sexual side effects there’s another drug buspar buspiron which
Is another antidote so you can sort of mix drugs to sort of get rid of the sexual side effects but finally we have a new drug vibrate that allows people to get good depression control but not have the sexual if somebody’s watching this at home um today and they are on an antidepressant and they’re not super happy with it what advice would you offer them well you
Can look on the internet vibrate you can say bring bring a sheet into your doctor and say would you consider trying me on this it’s a very effective antidepressant drugs so it should be that that doctor would be willing are there some people that are especially good candidates for this and then others that maybe it’s not they’re not going to be a good candidate
For this probably yes it’s a newer drug so we don’t have all the data about it but gosh um if if sexual issues are are knocking you down while you’re taking these medicines that make you alive and and not depressed and sad and and without ego and without a life quality uh ask your doctor to start you on this medication uh essentially all the patients who come to
Our office on ssris and there are an awful lot of them it’s essentially one in three uh one in ten americans are on these drugs we encourage them to sort of taper down on there and taper up on the fabric right now and it’s been very successful how long has this drug been out january 2011 it was fda approved took a little while to get to the drug stores and then
We didn’t have the data yet on it said it had less sexual side effects we really didn’t need to prove it a lot of people say that stuff but we really need to have good data for it and the data’s come out and it backs that yeah god bless it eight percent that’s incredible that’s really good yes dr irwin goldstein thank you so much for being here as always if people
Would like to get in touch with you you are at san diego sexual medicine at alvarado hospital all you have to do is go to our website fox5sandiego.com click on that scene on tab all right raul let’s send it back over to you erica thank you always good to have the good doctor here with
Transcribed from video
SDSM San Diego Sexual Medicine: Vilazodone (Viibryd), Depression and Sexual Health By sdsexualmed